


meanwhile, in the glorious future

by Kyele



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Everybody Lives, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mpreg, Mutual Pining, Pining, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyele/pseuds/Kyele
Summary: Eobard comforts himself afterwards by reminding himself that it could have been worse. At least Barry – the Flash – had kept his end of the bargain. He’d gone back in time to save his mother, and Eobard had gone home. Where he is. Right now. Back in the glorious future.Hehatesit.(AU from the end of Season 1.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, the real miracle is that it took me this long to write mpreg in this fandom.
> 
> This has nothing to do with the events of the most recent crossover - I've been working on this since well before that. Though I'm glad EoWells Lives is canon, as it always should have been!
> 
> Updates Tuesdays and Fridays, as usual.

Eobard comforts himself afterwards by reminding himself that it could have been worse. True, Barry _could_ have decided to hell with changing the past, turned his back on the singularity, and flung himself to his knees to beg Eobard to remain with him in this time. Barry could have gone on to describe all the many ways in which he desperately needs Eobard, a recitation which – in Eobard’s dreams – begins with his need for Eobard as a mentor and ends with his need for Eobard in a much more primal sense.

But at least Barry – the Flash – had kept his end of the bargain. He’d gone back in time to save his mother, and Eobard had gone home. Where he is. Right now. Back in the glorious future.

He _hates_ it.

Oh, yes, on the surface Eobard has everything he’d ever wanted. People who call him by his right name and genuflect in awe of his intellect. Modern technology and conveniences. He even has his speed back, all the way back: once returned to his own lab, the one in which he’d originally _given_ himself his speed, it had been a small matter to correct the damage done by the time loop and return his speed to normal.

Eobard could have returned his appearance to normal, too. Still isn’t sure why he hasn’t, most days. But he’s grown used to Harrison Wells’ body, Harrison Wells’ patterns of thoughts. And there are a lot of good memories in this body. Burgers, for example. This mouth had eaten a lot of burgers.

Of course, he’d _wanted_ to put this mouth on something far more rare…

Eobard crushes the thought as soon as it occurs to him, and goes off to teach his nine o’clock introductory to physics class. This is his penalty from the University for (a) blowing up his lab – the first time, the time he’d given himself his speed; (b) vanishing for a few months without a trace – using the singularity to get home had skewed his timeline somewhat, resulting in his returning somewhat after he’d left; and (c) messing up the faculty directory by refusing to revert to his original blonde-haired and blue-eyed appearance. It isn’t that changing his appearance in and of itself is so outré; this is the future, people get cosmetic surgery all the time. But Eobard had had the indecency to do so _after_ the annual pictures had been taken, and the first week of class had been full of students tentatively poking their heads into the auditorium, seeing a dark-haired man behind the lectern, and wandering back out again, searching tearfully for a professor they couldn’t find.

Eobard had found the whole thing amusing, actually. He doesn’t find much amusing, these days; he savors it, where he can.

He’s _bored._

“What’s your next research topic going to be?” the head of the physics department asks him one day, in a tone that implies that if Eobard doesn’t have an answer, she has three answers ready for him, all pre-approved by the Board of Trustees and with millions of dollars in government grants just begging to be awarded.

“I thought I might look into reviving the bovine,” Eobard tells her, just to see the look on her face. It’s as priceless as he’d hoped. When the shouting stops, though, he still finds himself stuck on earthquake prediction research.

“Earthquake prediction research,” Eobard says to Gideon in disgust, when he once again has his lab to himself. “So narrow-minded. As if the ability to monitor the timeline wouldn’t solve that problem, along with a host of others.”

“Yes, Professor Thawne,” Gideon says. She can’t sound anything other than pleasant and obedient, so it must be Eobard’s imagination that paints her as long-suffering.

“Show me the timeline,” he says.

Gideon also can’t raise an eyebrow or give Eobard a _look_. She just shows him a newspaper. The headline is worryingly familiar: _FLASH MISSING, VANISHES WITHOUT A TRACE._

Eobard sits up from his maudlin slump. At least the headline doesn’t make reference to a crisis this time, but the date has changed, too, for the worse: this newspaper is from approximately eight months after Eobard’s departure. The original _FLASH VANISHES_ headline had given Barry almost a decade.

“What _happened_?” he cries.

“Unknown.” Gideon can’t shrug, either. Eobard is going to have to work on that.

Eobard looks at the newspaper. He looks down at the ring he’s wearing. Looks back at the newspaper. Thinks of the riot act Dean Calhoun had read him, when Eobard had wandered back into his lab, a week past the start of the fall semester, after having caused an explosion and vanished mere hours after filing final grades at the end of the spring.

Dean Calhoun has no sense of perspective, really. At least Eobard had _filed_ grades. What would she have done if Eobard had left _without_ filing them? She should be grateful.

The future just isn’t what it used to be.

“Gideon, tag this date and time so I can get back to it exactly,” Eobard orders. Then he fires up his ring, gets into his suit, and runs back in time.

* * *

Eobard doesn’t run back to the time shown in the newspaper. He doesn’t know enough about the circumstances of the Flash’s disappearance, and what he doesn’t know could prove deadly, when messing with the timeline is involved. So he backs off, picks a time well in advance – five months ought to do it, that gives Eobard three months of buffer after leaving Barry on the rooftop of STAR Labs, enough time that hopefully Barry and everyone else Eobard had left behind have decided that Eobard’s really gone and stopped looking for him quite so hard. To get there is simple: Eobard goes out to the woods behind his house and runs on the jogging track he’d put down there until the portal appears, and then _crack_ , he’s still on the jogging track in the woods behind his house, except time has rewound itself and it’s 2015 again.

It’s 2015 again, and there’s someone in Eobard’s house.

Eobard is startled to see the silhouette, outlined against the brilliantly-lit windows, and is startled a second time to recognize it as Barry’s. He ducks back into the woods and hisses at Gideon, “What is going on?”

Gideon can’t glare at him through his watch, though Eobard swears she tries. “More detailed question required.”

“Why is Barry Allen in my house?”

Gideon is silent for a moment, and then says, “This property, including the house, was left to Mr. Allen in your will.”

“My _will_?”

“You were declared legally dead after your disappearance from STAR Labs three local months ago. Your will was read and your property disposed of.”

“I don’t _have_ a will!” Eobard had never bothered to make one. What had been the point? If he’d been dead, it wouldn’t matter – and if he’d returned to his own time, it wouldn’t matter, either. “Was it Harrison Wells’ will?” No, Eobard thinks a moment later, it couldn’t have been – Wells didn’t know Barry, and he wouldn’t have drawn up a will leaving property to an eight-year-old, anyway. He changes his question to something more useful: “Who made this will?”

“You did, Professor.”

Eobard grits his teeth. “All right, we’ll run this mystery down later. For now – I need somewhere to stay, since Mr. Allen has apparently decided to emulate Goldilocks in my absence. What’s available?”

“Checking, Professor.” Gideon hums to herself for a moment, a sign that she’s processing. “The condo downtown was not disposed of with the remainder of your property. It was officially sold some hours before your death and thus did not form part of your estate.”

“Sold to whom?”

“Universal Exports, LLC.”

Curiouser and curiouser. UE is the shell company Eobard had set up to hold certain of his assets, like the backup computer where Gideon had been stored, during the wait between his departure from 2015 and his reappearance in his own time. He’d used the company to forward himself some of the wealth and tangible goods he’d amassed during his time as Harrison Wells. Some of that had even included real estate, but he’d never intended to keep the condo. With the way housing turned over in downtown Central City, someone would have wanted to buy it badly enough to investigate its owner and discover the legal sophistry behind UE.

“So we have a will I never wrote and a condo I never sold to myself,” Eobard summarizes.

“On the plus side, you now have somewhere to sleep tonight,” Gideon observes.

“Fair point.” Eobard decides to go to his condo. He decides this quite decidedly, and therefore his feet carry him slightly forward, the better to observe Barry Allen wandering through Eobard’s kitchen.

“Professor?” Gideon asks in understandable confusion.

“Hush,” Eobard tells her.

Barry has drawn none of the house’s curtains; Eobard can see him clearly. He’s wearing lounge pants made out of some kind of fleecy material and a shirt with the Central City College logo on it. He looks tired. He takes a bowl out of the cabinet and sets it on the counter. Then he leaves it there and carries a carton of ice cream entirely out of the kitchen with him. Eobard scurries along the woodline until his vantage point includes the living room, where Barry is morosely flipping through channels on the TV and eating ice cream directly from the carton.

“Wow,” Eobard says.

“Indeed,” Gideon agrees.

Eobard is going to leave now. To stay any longer risks detection. For one thing, the tree cover is considerably less good here than it had been by the kitchen. And for another, Barry will be able to sense Eobard’s proximity, if he pays attention. Any speedster may sense another through the speed force. Especially if one speedster is staring at the other with enough intensity to burn a hole through the window between them. So Eobard is leaving. Right now. Right –

Barry’s head snaps up. He stares out the window and meets Eobard’s gaze directly.

“Shit,” Eobard says feelingly, and flees.

* * *

“That was dumb,” Eobard says.

“Yes, Professor.”

“Very dumb. Very _very_ dumb.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“I should leave. Go back to my own time. Or at least skip forward a couple of months. Let the heat die down.”

“I’ll start the calculations – ”

“No.”

“Yes, Professor.” A pause. “May I ask why?”

Eobard grips the granite countertops in his downtown condo’s kitchen. Why. Yes, why. Well, Eobard has a lot of good reasons why. Such as –

All right, perhaps he can’t think of them now. But he will, soon.

“You may not,” is what he tells Gideon, sounding – he hopes – appropriately aloof and mysterious.

“Very well.” Gideon is unruffled. Of course.

Eobard is very much ruffled. He paces the darkened living room. Then he thinks that he’s being foolish and turns the lights on.

“Why was Barry living in my house?” he asks again.

“That property – ”

“Gideon, response mode off, please.”

Gideon, naturally, doesn’t respond.

“Why was Barry living in my house?” Eobard repeats for the third time, this time in the full confidence that no one will try to answer him.

The house had been left to Barry. Someone had made a will, masquerading as Harrison Wells – someone _other_ than the Eobard Thawne who had already been masquerading as Harrison Wells, thank you very much – and had left the property to Barry. All right. But even given that, why had Barry _moved in_?

Eobard briefly considers the notion that Barry might have just been visiting. Then he dismisses it. Why would Barry visit Eobard’s house in lounge clothing for the purpose of eating ice cream on Eobard’s couch? Why would he have left dishes in the sink (Eobard had seen them) and added several throw blankets to Eobard’s couch (Barry had been beneath them)? No, Barry had moved in.

A desire for his own space? But he’d moved out of the West household a few months before Eobard had put the final act of his plan into motion. He’d had a _lease_ , for crying out loud. Had be broken his lease?

“Gideon, response mode on,” Eobard says out loud, dropping onto the condo’s couch – black leather, meant for show, and not nearly as comfortable as the couch in the house in the woods. “I need the complete text of my supposed will, all legal documents relating to the assets disposed of therein, and a copy of Barry Allen’s lease on his downtown apartment.”

“Appearing on your screen now,” Gideon says calmly, as the holoprojector embedded in the coffee table snaps to life. “Error. Barry Allen has no active lease of any kind.”

“Then give me his most recent _in_ active lease.”

“Affirmative.”

Appearing last, the lease naturally is projected atop the other documents Eobard had requested. Eobard can therefore easily see that Barry had terminated that lease, in accordance with its provisions, three and a half months after Eobard had left. He’d paid a fairly hefty sum to do so. The bank documents show he’d done so in cash, or the modern electronic equivalent.

“Three months to be declared legally dead, figure two weeks or so for probate…” Eobard nods to himself. “Which means…” He flips over to the will. Sure enough, the Harrison Wells Estate had left one Barry Allen a substantial sum.

“So ‘I’ leave Barry a house,” Eobard says, leaning back and steepling his fingers. “I also leave him a trust full of money. And the first thing Barry does is break the lease on his apartment and move straight into the house I left him.”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Gideon says. “There was one action he took before breaking the lease.”

Eobard raises an interested eyebrow. “Let’s have it then.”

The pages on the screen flip around until something different is on top – a scan of a handwritten form. “He filed for a change of work schedule.”

“To the night shift.” Eobard’s other eyebrow rises. “That’s interesting. Most of Central City’s crime occurs during the evening and night. I should think he’d prefer the nine-to-five.” Eobard shuffles back to the will. “Or no job whatsoever.” There’s enough money left to Barry in this will that, properly invested, Barry could afford to never work a day in his life again. Especially since he’s just acquired a house, mortgage-free.

“Barry Allen would feel a sense of duty,” Gideon says.

Eobard stills, thoughtful. Sometimes he forgets that Barry had been the one to program Gideon originally. Most times, actually. But in moments like this, Gideon’s insight brings that truth back forcefully to Eobard’s attention.

“He wouldn’t stop working because he’d inherited a fortune,” Eobard says, trying out the words and finding them true. “Because his work is more to him than a paycheck. It’s a means of giving back.”

“His career was chosen to help save others from the pain he endured.”

Eobard may wince slightly. He deserves that, he supposes.

But: “Then why move into _my house_?” It makes no sense. “I’m the cause of his pain! He didn’t – wait.” Eobard stops dead. Idiot, fool, three times a dunce – how had he not realized until now that _the timeline hasn’t changed?_

“Show me the death certificate of Nora Allen,” he orders, almost breathless.

Gideon obligingly flashes it up. It’s a familiar piece of paper. Too familiar.

“He didn’t change the timeline,” Eobard says blankly. “He didn’t save his mother.”

Gideon is silent.

“Why didn’t he save his mother?”

“Perhaps,” Gideon says, “you’d better ask him.”

* * *

Eobard is not a highly intelligent AI, but he is more than intelligent enough to know that walking up to Barry and simply asking him questions is not going to get him answers. Even if Barry doesn’t punch him – and that’s seeming like less than a sure bet – Barry is unlikely to actually invite Eobard in (to his _own house_ ), serve him coffee, and give him honesty.

Fortunately, Eobard is a master of trickery and guile. He has many other ways to get what he wants.

“Ack!” Caitlin Snow makes this sound, a high-pitched shriek, as she’s woken from a sound sleep to find a shadowy figure sitting in her desk chair. She fumbles nearby for a light.

“I apologize for the interruption, Dr. Snow,” Eobard says, politely, as if it’s not two in the morning. “I’m just checking in.”

Caitlin blinks rapidly, adjusting to the illumination cast by the lamp on her bedside table. “Dr. Wells?” she says incredulously. Then she stiffens. “Thawne?”

“Either is fine,” Eobard assures her, disingenuously.

“That isn’t what I meant.” Now Caitlin’s starting to look angry. “What do you want?”

“I told you. I’m just checking in. No, please, Dr. Snow, there’s no need for that.” Caitlin is fumbling under her pillow, presumably for a weapon stored there.

“Oh yeah, I’ll just take your word for it,” she fires back. Eobard admires the show of bravery, though she’ll need many more years – and possibly the activation of her meta gene – before it fully masks the fear.

Aloud, Eobard tsks. “Apply that magnificent brain of yours. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have already.”

“You’re just _checking in_.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not telling you anything.” There’s that bravado again. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

Oh-ho. Eobard’s gaze sharpens. “But I’m so very concerned about Mr. Allen,” he says, as smoothly as if he’s not guessing at all.

Truthfully, it’s hardly a gamble. Eobard doubts, somehow, that Caitlin would be so reticent if the patient under her care were, say, Cisco.

“Yeah, then why’d you run out on him?” There’s a spark in Caitlin’s eyes now; anger.

That’s interesting.

“I was under the impression that none of you wanted me in your lives any more.” Eobard cocks his head to the side and puts a hand to his chin, emulating a thinking pose. “How did you put it? ‘Leave and never come back’?”

“Save it,” Caitlin snaps. “I know you’re not really interested in the rest of us. You didn’t care how we’d feel about you turning out to be evil – you were ready to drop any of us just as fast as you dropped Hartley. This is about Barry. Barry and what _you_ left behind.”

Eobard sighs a little. He’d picked Caitlin for this approach because she’d been the one most fierce in her faith in ‘Doctor Wells’ – most fervent in her loyalty, least willing to believe in the ultimate truth. And he’d never killed her in an alternate timeline. Between the two, she’d been vastly more likely to receive him with something less than utter revulsion than, say, Cisco. But it appears, in the time Eobard’s been gone, Caitlin’s learned to hate him.

“I regret what I had to do with Hartley,” Eobard tells her, honestly. “As I regret what happened with you and Cisco. I was truly very fond of you.”

“Not as fond of us as you were of Barry.”

Eobard doesn’t quite frown. This smacks of jealousy, but that’s not quite right for the rest of Caitlin’s tone and demeanor.

And she only confirms that when she continues, “Not that it turned out you were very fond of him, either. Dr. Wells, how _could_ you?” The antagonistic demeanor breaks, just for a second, and the old Caitlin Snow is back, appealing to her mentor. “How could you just leave him?”

Eobard gives her the only answer he can. “He wanted me to.”

Caitlin shakes her head violently. “Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth.”

She stares at him. Hard. “Maybe in a moment of anger he told you to leave,” Caitlin says at length. “But you should have known he didn’t mean it.”

This rocks Eobard back somewhat. Should he have known that? _Should_ he? After all this time, all the watching, the waiting, the shaping, Eobard arguably knows Barry Allen – even _this_ Barry Allen, for whom there has never been a museum built or a history text written – better than anyone else. Better than Barry’s mother would have known him, were she alive today. And Eobard had been convinced that when Barry had said, _go, I never want to see you again_ , that he’d meant it.

Had he not meant it?

Had he wanted Eobard to say?

And _this_ gives Eobard another thought. A new thought.

“Is he – is Barry – does he _miss_ me?”

Is that why he’d moved into Eobard’s house? Out of _loneliness?_

Caitlin doesn’t even seem to hear Eobard’s question. She’s been looking down and away, staring at the stitching on her comforter without really seeing it, just as lost in thought as Eobard is. She says, as if it’s the outcome of her own train of thought, “Did Barry not know yet?”

“Know what?”

Caitlin looks up. “He didn’t tell me until after you were gone, but I assumed – oh, holy crap!” Caitlin sits up straighter. “If he didn’t know – did he tell _you_?”

“Tell me what?”

Caitlin leans forward. She stares at Eobard, hard. Eobard makes himself sit back and accept the scrutiny. It’s how he’d learned so many little secrets, back in the day: not with the use of the Speed Force, but through the more simple expedient of making himself… open. Making himself seem like a good person to tell, or making himself part of the furniture, so that people didn’t even realize what they were confessing.

“I think he didn’t tell you,” Caitlin says in a hushed whisper. “I think you don’t know.”

Eobard controls his impatience with an effort. “Then tell me now,” he invites. He’s already sitting down, and he’d left his suit behind in an effort to appear unmenacing. Now he folds his hands in his lap and cocks his head slightly, the picture of Dr. Wells, trusted and trustworthy scientist and mentor.

Caitlin isn’t fooled. She shakes her head, twice, decisive. “No way,” she says positively. “If you really don’t know, then you need to hear it from Barry. _Not_ me. After all.” She looks pensive. “Maybe he _did_ know, but chose not to tell you.”

 _Tell me what?_ Eobard does not repeat. He gathers his self-control around himself and stands. “Well, Dr. Snow, if you can’t be of any further assistance to me – ”

“Talk to Barry,” Caitlin says.

 _As if_ , Eobard does not say. He smiles instead. “I’ll leave you to your rest, then.”

This seems to baffle Caitlin. “Aren’t you going to…” she makes an odd hand gesture, rolling her hand on her wrist. “You know?”

Eobard does not, in fact, know. He stares at her.

“Threaten me?” Caitlin clarifies.

Eobard blinks. “To what end?”

“Something like, _don’t tell anyone I was here or else_?” Caitlin waits a beat, then shrugs. “I don’t know, for old times’ sake or something?”

Eobard shakes his head slowly. “While I would prefer that you kept my visit between ourselves, I am not foolish enough to think that threatening you would have any sort of positive outcome,” he says. “Perhaps – for old times’ sake – I will simply have to trust you. Caitlin.”

He leaves then. But he lingers in the Speed Force long enough to hear Caitlin say, frustrated, “Oh, that just isn’t _fair_.”

Eobard smiles a little to himself. Then he takes off – back to the glorious future, the start of the semester, and some serious data gathering.


	2. Chapter 2

This time, Eobard’s return to the future – to _his own time_ – is much more smoothly handled. He returns mere moments after he’d left, and is back in his lab a regular-human eyeblink later. With a cup of steaming coffee in hand, to explain where he’d been for those few missing moments, had anyone chanced to look in and notice his absence. (They hadn’t.)

“When’s my next class?” Eobard asks, setting the cup down. He doesn’t actually want the caffeine.

“Tomorrow at 10am,” Gideon answers.

Eobard rubs his hands together. “Plenty of time to write a few new historical data-gathering algorithms, wouldn’t you say?”

Gideon doesn’t answer. Eobard thinks, idly, that he’ll have to teach her how to sigh.

Actually, because computer science and its related fields have only gotten _more_ complex with the advent of quantum computing, it takes Eobard the better part of a month to tinker and iterate his way to a set of algorithms he’s satisfied with. Another few weeks allows them to establish themselves, plowing through training data and self-replicating at a rate that would be terrifying if it weren’t so appropriate. Eobard looks upon his small speedy children and finds them good, beaming with pride when they manage to independently cross-correlate the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Biela’s Comet.

“File that one away for the next time the history department is getting uppity,” Eobard tells Gideon, grinning.

“Going for another PhD, Professor?”

“Just a little insurance.” The history department has been known to look down their noses at Eobard, deeming him a comic-book-obsessed amateur whose standards for primary sources do not meet their definition of academic rigor. Once Eobard gets this situation with Barry sorted out and can travel between the time periods at will, he’s going to take great pleasure in bringing them impeccably-sourced proof that undermines all their most cherished notions about the late twentieth and early 21st centuries.

“Those fools actually think there were flying cars and jetpacks,” he murmurs as an aside, beatific. “Just wait until I show them _The Jetsons_.”

“The algorithms, Professor…”

“Right!” Eobard refocuses on the issue at hand. “Well, I think these are ready for primetime. Gideon?”

“I quite agree.”

“Then turn them loose. And grade those student tests for me, would you?”

“Unable to comply,” Gideon says primly. “Only a human may adequately assess the progress of another human.”

“Bah,” Eobard says, picking up the stack with a put-upon sigh.

* * *

“How’s the earthquake prediction research coming?” Dean Calhoun wants to know, three weeks later.

“Fine,” Eobard says, looking up from the latest stack of grading. Add/drop is about to close, and he’s only managed to scare away a tenth of his enrollees so far. He must be slipping. Maybe the blond hair was scarier somehow?

Dean Calhoun looks suspicious. “Just ‘fine’? That’s it? You haven’t started a war with another department?”

“No,” Eobard says virtuously. This is even true, for a wonder.

Dean Calhoun stares at Eobard. Then she says, accusingly, “You haven’t even started the research!”

“I have!” Eobard defends.

“What have you done?”

“I’ve developed a brand-new, highly efficient set of algorithms to correlate data on past events. Which I will use to gather and analyze the largest data set on past earthquakes and their surrounding factors the world has ever seen.”

Dean Calhoun still looks suspicious. “These algorithms exist?”

Eobard waves a hand at one of the screens in his lab, which is quietly scrolling output. “You see them running before your eyes.”

“Mm-hmm.” She crosses her arms. “I want preliminary results in a week.”

“A month.”

“Two weeks.”

“A _month_. Come on, you know how long number-crunching takes. Especially on these ancient machines that can barely crank a zettaflop – ”

“You want a yottaflop processor, you build it. It’s not in the budget otherwise.” Dean Calhoun straightens from her suspicious lean, looking calm again. “In the meanwhile, I’ll look forward to seeing your results next month. Thank you, Professor Thawne.”

“Thank you, Dean Calhoun,” Eobard calls after her. As soon as she’s out of earshot, he says, “Gideon, start another set of processes running to gather earthquake data.”

“Shall I use your private computing cluster?” Gideon asks.

“You’d better, if we want results in a month.” Eobard sighs. “This is going to slow down the Barry search.”

“Actually, Professor, we have some early results now. Would you like to take a look?”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Eobard spins to face the central display. “Yes, put them up!”

The screen lights up obediently. Eobard squints, swears, and cranks up the zoom. “Gideon, why haven’t I scheduled that eye clone and transplant yet?”

“I believe you were worried about the surgeons noticing your increased healing factor.”

Damn, Gideon’s right. Eobard sighs. “Well, at least renew my prescription for Retinax. Or better yet, hack the company’s database, I bet I can synthesize it right here. Make a few improvements, too.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Right…” Eobard trails off. “Gideon, are you seeing this?”

“I am observing the data now.”

Eobard reaches out to trace a data line – a habit he’d picked up in the twenty-first century, when even the best displays money could buy were still physical rather than holographic. Here in the future Eobard’s finger goes right through the display. He misses his old setup, suddenly, with an ache that’s almost physical.

Or maybe nostalgia for the past isn’t the source of this ache.

“He’s slowing down,” Eobard whispers. “Barry’s slowing down.”

“The deterioration actually predates your departure from that time period by approximately six weeks,” Gideon notes. “However, the variation was then so small that it has only become noticeable in retrospect, as part of the larger trend.”

“On the date I just visited he’s down to perhaps three-quarters of his speed.”

“Of the highest speed he ever demonstrated during your stay in his time period,” Gideon corrects. “Barry Allen’s theoretical maximum speed, according to historical records, would have been much higher.”

Eobard waves this aside impatiently. “I knew he still had a way to go. But I thought he could get there himself. I thought he _would_ get there himself, that he’d even exceed his highest recorded speed from the old timeline…”

“Instead Mr. Allen’s speed enters a period of decline that does not appear to reverse itself.”

“Does not appear – ” Eobard follows the line forward. It trends steadily downwards as time progresses. By the time it reaches the date on the newspaper headline, Barry had been achieving barely a quarter of the speed Eobard had personally seen him use mere months ago.

And then he’d died.

At least now Eobard can guess _why_. A speedster really only has one trick. Their speed can be applied in multiple ways, from creating tornadoes to throwing lightning to turning back time, but it all comes back to the same thing: the ability to move really, _really_ fast. If Barry loses that ability… well, he’d never been much good in a straight-up fight. Not since he’d been a bullied kid on the playground, young and newly orphaned and trying to punch out his pain.

Anything could have killed Barry, once he’d gotten that slow. Any metahuman with a grudge or a complex or just curious to see how they stack up against the famous Flash. Hell, a common criminal could have done it. It would have been easy.

Of course, that had been true at the beginning of Barry’s journey, too. Then he’d been even slower than the reports say he’ll be at the time of his death. But there had been a crucial difference. When Barry had first woken up from his coma, he’d had Eobard there, ready and able to eliminate any threats too advanced for Barry himself to handle. Barry’s gentle growth curve had not been an accident. There had been plenty of threats that would have squished Barry like a bug, had Eobard allowed them anywhere near.

Now Barry has no such protection.

“What goes wrong?” Eobard asks, retreating into science, into facts, because the alternative is to shout or break something. “What causes the deterioration?”

“Unknown,” Gideon says.

“Extrapolate.”

“Insufficient data. I have only one previous instance of speed deterioration on record.”

Eobard’s own, Gideon means. “And you can’t extrapolate from that?”

“Thus far there are zero elements of correlation between the incidents with confidence greater than five percent.”

Meaning the two are entirely, utterly dissimilar. Well, there’s that, at least. Barry has not accidentally maimed himself by messing with the timeline.

“Perhaps an illness?” Eobard posits. “Something specific to speedsters. Something that attacks the connection to the Speed Force. Or a kind of cancer.”

“Theoretically possible, but – ”

“But there is no data to support the conclusion.” Eobard sighs. Then he pauses. Stills. “What we need are medical data on Mr. Allen.”

“I can prepare a sample collection kit.”

Eobard shakes his head. “Not necessary. Unless Dr. Snow isn’t the physician I take her for. Gideon, dial up the STAR Labs database.”

_Doctor-patient confidentiality,_ Caitlin had said. Which means she’s treating Barry. She knows about this. And her reports will have been stored in the database, along with every other scrap of data ever obtained on the STAR Labs premises or by any STAR Labs-connected device. A database that has been carefully preserved in the intervening years, and is now available for Eobard to review.

“Working,” Gideon says. It takes a moment for her to recalibrate to the centuries-old protocols used to store the data. Eobard thinks, again, idly, of upgrading the database to something more modern. Again discards the idea. It’s unlikely that anyone will bypass the sophisticated security protections Eobard’s put on his systems, but if they ever do, the sheer obscurity of the protocols are their own defense. He really doesn’t want anyone realizing he has data from the 21st century just sitting around. There might be questions. And hiding bodies is so much _harder_ in the glorious future.

“Data are ready,” Gideon says, meaning she’s finished connecting and loading the translation layers. “Where do you want to begin?”

* * *

“This is useless,” Eobard says, a week and several sleepless nights later. “There’s nothing wrong with the search algorithms. There’s nothing wrong with the database. The data simply don’t _exist_.”

“I’m afraid I must concur,” Gideon says. “Either they were never recorded, or they were systematically wiped in a way I am unable to circumvent.”

“That would be a heck of a job if someone had managed it,” Eobard says. “But I suspect the answer is simpler than that. I’ve been manually going through Barry’s medical records, and it’s clear to me that they’re simply incomplete. Not redacted – incomplete. Caitlin withheld information.” He’s seen enough of her charts to know how to spot the omissions. “I would dearly like to know _why_.”

“Perhaps they suspected that you retained access to their records, and censored themselves accordingly,” Gideon suggests.

Eobard shrugs. “Perhaps; but to what end? If something is wrong with Barry’s speed, they should be scrawling large messages into the historical record, begging for my help. I know more about the Speed Force than any of them do.”

There is a pause. Delicately Gideon says, “Perhaps they did not believe your help was obtainable. Or that it would come for a price they were willing to pay.”

“Bah,” Eobard says impatiently, rising from his chair and starting to pace. “I told them over and over again that I only had their best interests at heart.”

Gideon doesn’t respond to this. Perhaps wisely. Eobard knows better, really he does – knows they’d all felt betrayed – but they’re some of the smartest minds of their generation; if they really can’t _see_ –

Perspective, as Eobard well knows, is not the same thing as intelligence. Quite often it’s just the reverse. How many mistakes had Eobard made before he’d finally started to be able to see the big picture? To separate out what _is_ from what _could be_?

“I need to go back again,” Eobard says. “If the data don’t exist, I must gather them myself.”

“I agree, Professor,” Gideon says promptly. Eobard suspects her of impatience, and smiles in spite of himself.

“All right, I’ll gather up that sample kit. Pick a good date for me to go back. Not the same one as before. We’ll let a bit more time pass. Let whatever’s wrong with Barry develop. But not too long – we’ll want to catch it while it’s still curable. Call it a month, plus or minus.”

“I will identify a suitable date.”

“Excellent. And Gideon?”

“Yes, Professor?”

“Cancel tomorrow’s classes. Just in case.”

* * *

Eobard arrives back in the twenty-first century in a rush of lightning. He comes to a leisurely halt in the woods outside his house and takes a moment to just breathe deep and revel. He’s back: back in the land of burgers, of physical displays you can actually touch, of sunrises you can see from where you live…

Of Barry Allen.

The house is just over there. Through the woods. Past the sunrise.

“Professor,” Gideon says, voice tinny through the smaller speakers. “You instructed me to remind you not to go near the house.”

“Oh, yes,” Eobard remembers. “So I did.”

“Professor,” Gideon says again. “You instructed me to use the electric shock functionality on this watch.”

“I did not,” Eobard says, shocked.

“Professor – ”

“Oh, fine.” He does have a plan, he supposes. Go back to the condo. Spend a few days getting the lay of the land. Figure out how best to acquire the data he needs, and if it can be done without making direct contact with anyone from this time period.

The less Eobard messes with history, the better. Even if it does feel so right, somehow, to be here. In this time. In these woods. On this jogging path –

There’s a sudden jolt to his senses, as if a lightning bolt has struck nearby. Eobard almost jumps, unused to the sensation, and it takes him a precious extra moment to realize that that’s the feeling of another speedster tapping into the Speed Force from right nearby –

Barry Allen, coming home for the not-evening, at the end of his newly-transferred-into night shift. And Eobard is standing _right in the middle of his route_.

This time, Eobard thinks he manages to make it out of there before Barry sees him.

* * *

“That was close,” Eobard says, locking the door to his downtown condo firmly behind him. As if that could stop a speedster. Or any metahuman. Or any sufficiently determined human, really.

Well, Eobard’s security system should do for the latter two, at least.

“Too close, Professor,” Gideon opines.

“Did he see me?”

“Timeline variation registering 1.25 on the Kairos scale. I believe you may infer that he did not; however, caution is advised.”

“Right.” Eobard sits on the couch. “We need a better couch.”

“Furniture deliveries to this property would dramatically increase the chances of discovery.”

“I was more thinking of a little burglary, but thanks anyway.”

“Certainly, Professor.”

Eobard contemplates the deficiencies of his condo’s furniture for a few minutes longer. Then, with a sigh, he sits up. “To work.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Eobard is a disciplined, thorough worker – he could never have accomplished all he’d accomplished otherwise – and, aside from a break for lunch and then for dinner, he manages to work through the entire day and into the evening before the inevitable occurs.

“Let’s pull up the feed from the STAR Labs video cameras now, Gideon.” Eobard stretches out to put his feet up on the coffee table, sucking down the last of his vanilla shake with gusto. Usually he prefers chocolate, but he’d had that for lunch, so for dinner he’d changed it up.

“Professor, is that wise?”

“It’s necessary,” Eobard says virtuously. “Caitlin is censoring her medical reports. So we have to catch her in the act of gathering the omitted data.”

Gideon cannot, and therefore does not, sigh. She _does_ put the requested feeds up on the built-in display.

“Thank you, Gideon,” Eobard says, because he has manners.

And he seems to have luck, too – not only is Caitlin visible, in the medical bay, but Barry is there as well. Coming for a checkup, no doubt. At least, Eobard is choosing to believe that that’s why Barry is in STAR Labs at 11 o’clock at night, and not wearing his shirt.

It had _better_ be why he’s not wearing his shirt.

“No change,” Caitlin is saying. “Your speed is a little down, but no more than it’s been going down, and everything else looks good, too.” She’s entering data into a STAR Labs computer while she talks. Eobard tracks it on another screen as it gets synchronized to the database: blood pressure, weight – hmm, a slight gain, interesting – speed force saturation. Which is down. Again. But, as Caitlin says, down consistently with the depreciation curve that Barry’s been displaying for the last three-plus months.

“So,” Caitlin goes on, tapping the last _save_ button and turning to face Barry, “Why don’t you tell me what brought you in, insisting on an extra checkup?”

Eobard feels oddly vindicated. It _is_ a checkup. Of course it is.

Barry puts his arms around himself, as if he’s cold, though he makes no move to put his shirt back on. “I saw him again.”

“Who?”

“Eobard Thawne.”

Eobard winces. So Barry _had_ spotted him. Damn.

“Oh,” Caitlin says. To her credit, she sounds relatively normal.

“I saw him before. Last month.”

Eobard sighs. “Careless of me, I know,” he admits to the empty room.

“I think,” Caitlin says carefully, “that – that to a certain extent it’s natural, isn’t it? To hope that you see him, or think that maybe you do – ”

Barry is shaking his head. “No, this isn’t that,” he interrupts. “I’m – this time, okay, it was just a glimpse. But that first time, I tried to tell myself I was dreaming, I’d fallen asleep on the couch or something, but – but it was so _real_. Caitlin, could I be hallucinating?”

Caitlin wrinkles her nose. “I don’t see why.”

“I mean – is it normal to hallucinate, or, or see things, when you’re – ”

“Nope.”

“Oh.” Barry deflates a little. “Okay.”

Barry’s hanging his head; Caitlin has to duck a little to see his expression, which she does. “You’re really worrying about this.”

“If this isn’t normal, then I think I’m going crazy, Cait. I just – I keep seeing him!” Barry looks up, pleading. “What am I going to do if I’m really losing it? How am I going to – to handle everything, I mean, being the Flash, and my day job, and then on top of everything else – ”

“You’re not going crazy!”

Barry stumbles to a verbal halt. “I’m not?”

Caitlin looks briefly torn, then firm. She reaches out and urges Barry to sit back down on one of the chairs. She herself does the same. “You’re not going crazy,” Caitlin repeats. “I – I saw him too. Once.”

The change in Barry is astonishing. From slumped, dejected, and afraid, he sits up suddenly, alert and eager. “You did?” He looks like he’s about to leap out of his chair and go running off to chase the apparition.

“About a month ago,” Caitlin admits. “I didn’t think it was right to say anything to you.”

“Just once?” Barry begins to look a little afraid. “That long ago? Are you – maybe you were just having wishful thinking, too.”

Caitlin winces a little. “No, I’m sure it was him. We… er… we had a conversation.”

“He spoke to you?” Now Barry looks betrayed. “Wait, he talked to you and not me?”

“Hey, I knew him before you did!” Caitlin defends. Then she seems to realize how ridiculous that sounds and corrects herself. “Anyway, all we talked about was you. You were all he was interested in.” Now she sounds a little bitter.

Barry clearly hears it, too, because the first thing he says is, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I snapped, and I’m sorry he…” The apology doesn’t keep him distracted for long. “He asked about me?”

“He said he was checking in.”

“Checking – ” Barry’s eyes widen. “Does he know?”

Caitlin shakes her head. “I thought at first that he must, but the way he talked, the way he asked – no. I’m pretty sure he _doesn’t_ know. And before you ask, I told him he should talk to you. But I guess we both know he didn’t take that advice.”

“No,” Barry says softly. Then, gaining in volume and gesticulating: “No, apparently he’s just content to watch me from afar, taking occasional peeps and letting me think I’m crazy!”

“Barry…” Caitlin sounds hesitant.

Barry looks at her. He looks, suddenly, sad. Eobard doesn’t like that. “What?”

Caitlin takes a deep breath. “Okay, I know you said… but… are you _sure_ it was Dr. Wells? Er, Thawne? Who got you into this…” she waves her hands, as if she’s at a loss for words. “…condition?”

Eobard’s heart stops beating. _What?_

Barry laughs a little. It also sounds sad. “Yes, Caitlin. I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

“Not that there’s any doubt, because there wasn’t anyone else, but you know, even if there had been, I think it would have had to have been him anyway, you know?” When Caitlin looks somewhat blank, Barry clarifies. “Another speedster.”

“Oh. Ohhh.” Now Caitlin looks like she gets it. “Of course. Duh, Caitlin.” She attempts a smile of her own; it’s weak. “Biology 101. Of course. You’re really an entirely different species now, aren’t you?”

Barry shrugs, a little awkwardly, since he’s also – finally – grabbing his shirt from where it had been draped nearby and pulling it back on. Eobard has been able to see the goosebumps on his skin, thanks to the high-resolution cameras, for several minutes now. “I guess so,” Barry says. “I mean, when I was dating Linda, I had trouble doing anything with her. Even kissing. Because I’d start losing control of my speed.”

“Did you have that trouble with Doctor – er, Doctor Thawne?”

Did Barry ever. Eobard smiles, reminiscently. The way he’d set up his incognito had prevented him from regularly getting to see Barry run; he’d always been back at STAR Labs, in the cortex, pretending to be wheelchair-bound. Usually Eobard had only gotten to behold the Flash when Eobard had taken the chance to stretch his own legs in the yellow suit. But there had been those memorable exceptions. The last month before Eobard had revealed himself, two months before Eobard had left – for good, he’d thought at the time – when Barry’s shy admiration and earnest hero-worship had spilled over in the sweetest of ways, and Eobard had gotten to see all that beautiful speed and goodness and heroism spread out on his bed, bright with lightning and youth and _promise_ …

Back on the screen, Barry is nodding jerkily. “Yes, but – it didn’t matter. With him. Because he knew already. About my speed. So he didn’t mind when I lost control.”

Caitlin must hear the same thing in Barry’s voice that Eobard does, because she touches Barry on the shoulder. “Barry, I’m sure – ”

Barry pulls away. “I guess it was more than him not minding,” he says. Now he’s starting to sound angry. “He probably leeched speed from me. Just used me up and threw me out and left me like this.”

“Barry!” Caitlin doesn’t give him a chance to pull away, this time; she grabs him in a tight hug. Barry could still escape, of course. If he wanted to. But he must not. He lets Caitlin hug him, and after a moment he puts his arms around her, too.

Eobard decides not to examine the way this makes him feel. He also decides, in an unrelated matter, not to punch the walls. He likes these walls. It would be such a hassle to get them fixed. The condo is supposed to be empty, after all. And Eobard, though skilled in many and varying fields, is not particularly handy with home repair.

Why is Barry _telling_ Caitlin all of this? These are good memories, Eobard’s few trysts with Barry Allen, childhood hero turned enemy turned… whatever it is they had been to each other, whatever they had since become. Eobard doesn’t want these memories spilled out on the ground for Caitlin to pick through. He wants to keep them hidden, just for he and Barry to remember and be warmed by.

“He could have matched me the whole way through if he’d wanted,” Barry is saying, voice muffled from having his face pressed to Caitlin’s shoulder. “He could have been with me like an equal. Shown me so many things. If he’d wanted to. If he’d _cared_.”

“That’s unfair,” Eobard says out loud, startled into talking to a screen that can neither hear nor reply. “It had nothing to do with caring. Nothing, Barry. I told you that. I told you I cared about you. This you.”

On the screen, Caitlin has been silent, processing. At last, after even Eobard’s words have fallen into silence, she says, “It sounds like the part you’re most hurt about is that he didn’t.”

“Stupid, right?” Barry pulls away again, more slowly this time, and Caitlin lets him go. “I should be furious that he tricked me into sleeping with him. Or – well – he didn’t trick me into _sleeping_ with him – ”

“Thank you,” Eobard says, half offended.

“He just lied to you about who he was and what he was capable of,” Caitlin offers. “And what he’d done.”

“That’s what I should be mad about,” Barry says, looking anywhere but Caitlin. “Not that he didn’t stay.”

Eobard touches the screen. He reaches out to touch the screen, and his fingers make contact with it, because that’s how screens behave in this time and place. That’s how screens are _supposed_ to behave. Properly solid, not holographic. Offering the option of physical contact even when separate.

Caitlin visibly hesitates before speaking. “But he may come back,” she says at last. “He came back a few times already. He may come back again.”

“To check in?” Barry shakes his head. “That’s not the kind of back I want out of him.”

“It isn’t?” Eobard asks out loud. “Then what kind of back do you want from me, Barry?” He shakes his head. “And why didn’t you tell me any of this before I left?”

Eobard would have stayed. He would have gotten right out of that time ship and gone back to being Harrison Wells. He would have sat down in that wheelchair in public, if that’s what it had taken, and donated to as many charitable causes as it had taken to rehabilitate his reputation. Reopened STAR Labs. Reinvented a few minor things, nothing that would affect the timeline, just enough to ensure financial security for everyone on Team Flash forever, not to mention gainful employment for a significant part of Central City’s population. Paid taxes. Said _run, Barry, run_ into a microphone, even when he’d wanted to be out there with Barry. If that had been what it had taken. If Barry had said he’d wanted Eobard to stay.

Caitlin is nodding. “I know,” she says gently.

“Anyway.” Barry is suddenly back in motion, suddenly brusque. “I’d better go. Need to run a few patrols before I head to work.”

Caitlin doesn’t look best pleased by this, but she’s known Barry long enough to know, as Eobard immediately knows, that any argument would be futile. Barry feels vulnerable; Barry runs. That’s how Barry is. Most of the time. Except for the few times when he’d run, not away, but straight to the man he’d called Harrison Wells.

“I should never have left,” Eobard says out loud, knowing it for the truth.

“Watch your back,” Caitlin says, on the screen. “And your front.”

That makes Barry smile a little, for some reason, a quirky kind of half-smile that has always made Eobard’s heart beat a little faster. “Will do,” he says. And then he’s gone, running off. In the blink of an eye, from Caitlin’s perspective. Not too fast for the cameras – or Eobard’s eyes – to see. Eobard watches Barry turn, his stride lengthen, the ground disappear beneath his feet. He traces Barry until Barry is beyond the reach of the STAR Labs security system, and only then does Eobard turn off the feed, sit back, and try to understand what he’s seen and heard.


	3. Chapter 3

Eobard goes to bed. It’s the first step in his new plan, which can be summarized, basically, as: _don’t do anything rash._

He closes his eyes, the better to sleep.

_Are you sure it was Dr. Wells? Er, Thawne? Who got you into this condition?_

_I think it would have had to have been him anyway. Another speedster._

There’s really only one conclusion. If Eobard did this – and he trusts Barry enough to believe that Barry has a solid foundation for his belief –

Something Eobard has done, somewhere along the line – something so small and so minute that Gideon hasn’t even noticed, improbable as that seems – has changed the timeline. Changed it in such a way that Barry’s connection to the Speed Force has become damaged. As Eobard’s had been damaged, fifteen years and a lifetime ago.

_What did I do? When did I do it? How do I fix it?_

Not even Gideon had had the answers to that question.

_Barry will know._

Eobard rolls over, the better to block out that thought. It persists.

_Barry will know. Barry is the only one who can know. It happened to him – the rest of us see nothing different._

No. No, that can’t be true. There can be another way. Eobard will find it. He certainly can’t face Barry until he can say he’s ready to fix his mistake.

_That’s what I should be mad about. Not that he didn’t stay._

It doesn’t matter if Barry would be willing to see him anyway.

It doesn’t –

_It sounds like the part you’re most hurt about is that he didn’t._

_I should never have left._

_So what am I doing now?_

Eobard sits up, slowly.

“Gideon,” he says, “is Barry at work?”

“Affirmative,” she replies.

Eobard nods, still slowly. “So I wouldn’t be waking him up.”

There’s a pause. “No, Professor.”

* * *

The run over to the CCPD is a short one. Eobard’s condo is in an excellent location. Even if it weren’t, though, the run would still be short. Most runs are short to a speedster.

Eobard has just enough time, on the way over, to debate the best way to make his appearance. Somehow he doesn’t think that just appearing in a rush of lightning will yield him the best results. Barry might punch him. Or scream. Or try to run away, though that would be futile, given Barry’s current speed loss.

Still. Best not to go there, Eobard thinks.

Instead he slows his steps somewhat, letting his lightning race out ahead of him and warn Barry that there’s another speedster in the area. Call Eobard egotistic, but he’s fairly confident that Barry will assume that it’s Eobard.

The CCPD stores their forensic scientists in the loft of their building, a fact which had proven very convenient, once upon a time, when arranging for Barry to be hit by lightning. It’s convenient again, since it means there’s no one else on the floor watching Eobard appear out of nowhere and knock decorously on the door.

There’s a pause. Footsteps. The door opens.

“Hello, Barry,” Eobard says quietly.

Barry looks like he doesn’t know what to do first. “It’s really you,” he settles for saying.

“Yes.”

There’s another few moments of staring. Then Barry seems to remember his manners. “Come in,” he invites, stepping back so Eobard can enter.

“Thank you,” Eobard says, doing so.

Back to the silent staring.

“Uh, have a seat,” Barry says at last, seeming to realize that Eobard isn’t going to do anything Barry hasn’t specifically asked him to do. “Over there, you can have Patty’s chair. She stayed with the day shift.”

“Do you like the solitude?” Eobard asks, falling back on small talk as he takes the chair in question and adjusts it to his height.

“Not really,” Barry says. He stays standing, arms crossed.

“Ah.”

Barry goes back to staring at Eobard. It’s intense and a little unnerving, though Eobard would never admit it.

Instead he says, carefully, “I get the feeling you’re waiting for me to say something.”

“Maybe I am,” Barry replies. His arms creep lower, until he’s more hugging himself than crossing them. As he’d done at STAR Labs. It’s not cold here in the lab, though. If anything, it’s a little warm.

“I’m sorry, Barry, I don’t know what that would be.”

To Eobard’s surprise, Barry relaxes somewhat. “That’s a start, anyway,” he says, taking his chair.

“What is?” Eobard starts, then immediately answers: “Ah. An apology.”

“Yeah. Not for what I would like it to be, but – ”

“I’m sorry about your mother, as well.”

Barry freezes.

“I have been for some time,” Eobard continues. “You’ll understand, there was no good way to express that sentiment before. And it was difficult to know if you’d find an apology valuable or if it would merely serve as a painful reminder of what you believed to be an irrevocable event.”

“And now?”

“Now. Hm.” Eobard quirks a smile, amused in spite of himself. “ _Now_ comes after _then_. And _then_ was a time in which you could have undone your mother’s death. Restored the original timeline, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. You may have chosen not to – and I would like to know why – but the act of making it possible hopefully serves as an indication that my regret is sincere.”

Barry nods. “It did. Does.”

Eobard waits a moment. Asks, delicately, “Will you tell me why you chose not to save her?”

Barry blinks. “Can’t you guess?”

Eobard shakes his head.

“Then you really don’t know.”

“Know…”

Barry takes a deep breath. He looks like he’s steeling himself for something. When he speaks, though, he speaks to Eobard’s shoes. “I didn’t think my mother would choose her own life over her grandchild’s. Who would be deleted if I changed this timeline.”

_Grandchild_ , Eobard’s lips shape. _Oh._

Oh.

“Congratulations to you and Ms. West,” he manages to say. “Or do I mean West-Allen?”

Now Barry looks up. Looks incredulous. “Iris has nothing to do with this. My God, she and Eddie just set a date – what on Earth are you thinking?”

“I’m sorry,” Eobard says for the third time in this conversation. It’s that kind of conversation – the kind only Barry Allen can have with him – the kind that sends Eobard reeling, all his carefully thought out plans falling apart, his notions challenged and destroyed, his world reforming itself around him. Barry can do it with a sentence – with a single word. Has done it even without speaking, just by opening his eyes from a long coma and looking at Eobard as if Eobard holds the answers to everything in the universe.

It’s not unlike the way Barry is looking at Eobard now, except that Barry is also looking at Eobard as if he is also being unfathomably dense.

Eobard says, grasping again after manners, “Who then is the lucky lady?”

“I guess I am,” Barry says.

“Barry, you’re not making any sense.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out why you never told me,” Barry goes on, apropos of nothing. “I mean, you generally didn’t tell me a lot of things. But if there was something I needed to know, you figured out a way to ‘discover’ it. Or you’d ‘guess’ it. How come you never ‘guessed’? Didn’t you think I’d want to know?” Then he blinks and stares. “Or, wait, were you – did you – ” Now he starts looking upset. “Was this some kind of way to, to _trap_ me? To keep me stuck to you or something? Because if it was – ”

Eobard holds up both hands. “I have no idea – _no idea_ – what you’re talking about,” he says, using the full force of his Harrison Wells persona to throw weight behind the words. “Whatever you think I know, I don’t. Barry. I came here tonight – I came back in the first place – because you’re in danger. I saw the decline in your speed. I know you know about it too. I thought you’d know what caused it, and it sounds like you do. Tell me what it is, and we’ll fix it.”

“You really don’t know,” Barry breathes. “How is that possible? You know everything!” A moment later Barry turns bright red. “At least – about being a speedster!”

Eobard has to fight to keep his fond smile to something reasonable and appropriate to the situation. The still very grave situation, he reminds himself. Barry is still in danger. But some of the fondness leaks into his voice as he says, “Not everything. Not by a long shot. More than you, granted. But the only other speedsters I’ve met, besides you, have been on the field of battle. When it came to you, I knew only what I could learn from myself.”

Barry stares at him. “And you’re you,” he says to himself. “You’d never notice.”

Eobard grasps his patience with both hands and a lasso. “Notice _what_?”

“So it turns out I grew more than a little speed while I was in that coma,” Barry says. “Turns out I grew a few new organs, too. And, uh, had some of my DNA rewritten.”

“The Speed Force does rewrite your DNA,” Eobard says carefully.

“Yeah. Well, uh, so. Wow. I really didn’t think I’d have to tell you this.”

“Barry, please – ”

“I’m pregnant. Oh, and it’s your baby. Surprise.”

Eobard sits there for a minute. Or, possibly, an hour. Usually he has quite a good sense of the passage of time. Comes of being a speedster. It’s failing him at the moment. As is just about any emotion other than a sort of blankness.

After a minute – or, possibly, an hour – Eobard says, “Barry…”

He means to say more. He doesn’t manage it.

“Turns out the term ‘metahuman’ is something of a misnomer,” Barry says, when it becomes clear that Eobard isn’t going to continue without prompting. “We’re really more like a different species. And it turns out I’m a girl speedster. Which I didn’t know about when I slept with you. Or I would have demanded some kind of contraceptive. Or maybe to be the fuck-er instead of the fuck-ee.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” Eobard says without thinking. “You – shit.” This cannot possibly be a good thing to say. He closes his mouth. His eyes widen without conscious intent.

To his surprise, Barry laughs. “No, you’re right, I really, really wanted you to fuck me,” he says, still chuckling. “And hey, maybe this is even why. Though I would eventually have wanted to switch it up. If you’d stuck around…” his laughter trails off.

“I had no idea.” Eobard stops. Swallows. Leans forward, so Barry can see exactly how truthful Eobard is being. “Honestly. No. Idea.”

“I believe you,” Barry admits. “I’ve never seen you this much at a loss.”

“I should have stuck around regardless.” Eobard opens his hands, resting on his knees, palm up. Surrender. “I realize that now. I was waiting for you to tell me you wanted to stay; I thought that was necessary, though I’m no longer sure why. And when you didn’t say you wanted me to stay, I thought I had to go. So I did. But I couldn’t stay away. Even before I knew about – this – ” he waves a hand helplessly. “I knew I’d been wrong to leave. That I wanted to…” He shrugs. “To fix that wrongness, I suppose. In whatever way I could. In whatever way you’d allow.” Despite himself, Eobard’s gaze keeps coming back to where Barry’s arms are still loosely crossed, hanging low. Over his midsection, Eobard realizes. Over his belly. Protectively, though Barry’s defenses seem to be down.

And why not? He’s only alone and speed-drained in a room with his oldest, most virulent enemy. Who happens to be the father of his child.

Barry.

Pregnant.

“Are you going to show?” Eobard blurts.

A tentative smile creeps back out onto Barry’s lips. “I already am, a little.”

Eobard swallows. “Can I see?”

Barry stands up. He takes off his shirt. As he’d done in STAR Labs, Eobard realizes suddenly. So that Caitlin could _check on the baby._

Eobard will have to check the security feed again; he doesn’t know how he’d missed this. The only defense he can come up with is that, in that video, Barry had been facing the camera dead-on. Nothing looks different about Barry when Eobard sees him from the front. But then Barry makes a half-turn, presenting Eobard with a side view, and Eobard sees.

There’s a bump. Tiny, but there.

On the Flash.

On Barry.

“Thawne?” Barry clears his throat, and says, as if he’s unsure how to form the sounds: “Eobard?”

“Yes?”

“Say something.”

Eobard thinks about pointing out that he just has. What he actually says is, “I think if I had known this was possible I would have been fantasizing about it for _years_.”

Then he claps a hand over his mouth and wonders if he should phase right through the floor. How mortifying.

But Barry’s smile is getting more real.

“It freaked me out at first,” Barry admits. “Still does, sometimes. I mean, I basically changed genders. Also species. But you know. One of those is more jarring than the other.”

“I can imagine,” Eobard says faintly.

“Huh?”

Eobard removes the hand from his mouth. “I can imagine,” he repeats, then pauses. “Okay, maybe I can’t. But… wow.” He reaches out. “Can I?”

“Sure.”

Eobard lays his hand on Barry’s stomach. It feels like a stomach. He guesses there’s nothing to feel yet. Then he does feel something, but it’s not from Barry: it’s the sudden realization that Barry knows exactly how deadly Eobard can be with a single hand – knows that it’s the means by which he’d killed at least a half dozen men that Barry’s aware of – but Barry hadn’t hesitated to allow Eobard to put that same hand on top of his gentle bump.

“I think I must be dreaming,” Eobard announces to the room at large.

Barry’s smile becomes a grin. “Come back to STAR Labs with me and you can see an ultrasound,” he invites. “Hard to think you’re dreaming when you’re listening to a heartbeat.”

A heartbeat – “Let’s go,” Eobard says, shooting to his feet.

Barry gets up more slowly. “Patience,” he says, still grinning. “I’m running for two these days.”

* * *

“You sure took your sweet time following my advice,” Caitlin says to Eobard, somewhat acerbically.

“From my point of view it was considerably less time than from yours,” Eobard says absently. His attention is focused on two things: Barry, shirtless on a STAR Labs biobed, and Caitlin, pulling a bottle of medical lubricant out of the warmer.

“You skipped ahead?” Caitlin now looks bemused. “Why not talk to Barry right then? What did you gain by waiting?”

“Data.”

“He means he tried to figure it out on his own instead of asking me,” Barry says. “Can I get a pillow – thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Eobard beams, tucking the pillow more firmly under Barry’s neck. “Are you comfortable otherwise?”

Caitlin and Barry share a Look. “So he’s apparently going to be one of _those_ expectant fathers,” Caitlin says.

“Let him be,” Barry says. “I kind of like it.”

“I’m still stuck on the part where you have _extra organs_ now,” Eobard says. “We did imaging on you after the coma. It didn’t show anything abnormal.”

“Apparently they exist in a kind of fluxed, out-of-phase state,” Caitlin says, wheeling up a piece of equipment Eobard has never seen before. She holds up a hand. “Don’t ask me for the details; Cisco’s the one who figured it out. They don’t show up on a normal X-ray. Cisco built this bad boy so we can get better images.” Caitlin pats it proprietarily.

“It detects speed force energy?” Eobard peers closer.

“High-band waves given off by speed-force-bonded cells, yes,” Barry says. “Apparently my baby-making bits mostly stay _in_ the Speed Force until they’re needed. I don’t know if that’s some kind of thing to help me hide – do we _have_ evolution like that? – or if it’s just part of the package when you’re making a baby speedster.”

“I don’t think there are anywhere near enough of us for anything like meaningful evolution,” Eobard begins. Then he gets abruptly sidetracked by a new thought. “Are they going to be _born_ a speedster?” He has a sudden vision of a toddler that can move at Mach 3.

“We won’t know until they’re actually here, but that’s the working theory,” Caitlin says. “Anyway. Here’s your Hallmark moment.” Caitlin applies a wand to Barry’s stomach, and there –

“Oh,” Eobard says somewhat blankly. “That’s a baby?”

“Not yet,” Caitlin says, laughing. “That’s a fetus.”

“I knew that,” Eobard says with dignity.

“You lab science types still don’t do any of the practical bio rotations in the glorious future, huh?”

“It’s not considered necessary.” Eobard slides Caitlin a Look of his own. “I was promised a heartbeat.”

“O ye of little faith.” She slides the wand over sideways, hits a button, and a low, throbbing sound suddenly fills the room.

“Oh,” Eobard says again.

He reaches out. Touches the display. He can’t touch that sound, but the displays of this time are real and solid, and underneath his fingers the blob seems to wiggle in happiness.

“So,” Barry says, sounding scared and determined all at the same time. “I seem to recall you wanted to be asked to stick around. This is me. Or, I guess, us. Asking.” He takes a breath. “Stick around?”

“Mr. Allen – Barry.” Eobard shakes his head. “Just _try_ to get rid of me.”

It’s probably Eobard’s imagining, but he thinks that, as Barry’s smile widens, the heartbeat gets a little louder, too.


	4. Chapter 4

“You promised you’d stick around, so stop fussing,” Barry says, moving towards the front door of Eobard’s – Barry’s – Eobard and Barry’s house in the woods. The doorbell had sounded mere moments ago, and Eobard is eyeing the windows.

“I didn’t promise to play ‘meet the family’,” he points out, reasonably enough.

“It’s your family too,” Barry counters, also reasonably. He opens the door and smiles; Eobard can hear it in his voice as he says, “Iris, Eddie, come on in.”

“Yes, yes, and the weather is lovely, what _is_ it?” Iris throws her arms around Barry, then pulls back and looks him over critically. “What was it that you just _had_ to see us tonight?”

“You know we’ll help you any way you can, Barry,” Eddie says earnestly from Iris’ side. “But you know, it might help if – oh.”

He’s seen Eobard. Eddie nods to himself, slowly, while Eobard tries not to tense and definitely doesn’t consider three different escape routes and four different methods of physical violence.

Eddie walks over. “Hey, Gramps.”

Iris has spotted Eobard now too. She glances between Eobard and Barry, visibly skeptical. “Barry…”

“Yeah.” Barry nods. “Come on in. Dinner’s just about ready.”

“Sounds good to me,” Eddie says, moving into the dining room. His voice floats back, determinedly cheerful. “Aw, Barry, did you cook? We would have been fine with takeout.”

“I’m practicing,” Barry says. He starts drifting after Eddie, lingering along his route as he gives Iris pleading looks. “Takeout isn’t always agreeing with me right now. I like the stuff I make better.”

Iris is still watching Eobard like a hawk. But she gives in to Barry’s pleading look and does so while moving in the direction of the dining room table. She says, “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Oh, God, not you too,” Barry groans. “Eobard has been fussing over me constantly. He tried to make me eat his burger the other day.”

Iris’ gaze doesn’t flinch, but something softens a little around her eyes. “Did he now.”

“Iron is important for neonatal development,” Eobard says. It’s the first contribution he’s made to the conversation since Iris and Eddie had arrived. Fitting, then, that it’s on the topic that has prompted this little reunion.

“That’s what supplements are for,” Barry says.

“Their efficacy on speedsters isn’t proven – your metabolism goes through them much faster than they’re designed for.”

“So I’ll take more.”

“Too much iron is dangerous too,” Eobard says, frustrated.

Iris finally lets herself be herded into the dining room. “You didn’t do research on the topic?” She seats herself precisely, joining Eddie on one side of the table. Eobard takes a seat catty corner to her, opposite his ancestor, who is already seated and contemplating his water glass as if it holds the answer to life’s mysteries. That leaves Barry between them.

And Barry takes the answering of Iris’ question on himself. “Actually, Eobard had the shock of his life today,” he says, tone deliberately light. “He had no idea I could get pregnant. Crazy, huh?”

“Sure is,” Iris says. Her tone is flat. “I mean, since he’s so super smart and all. And knowledgeable about speedsters.” She tips her head to one side, not-quite-glaring at Eobard. “Almost defies belief.”

“I appreciate your good opinion of me,” Eobard says carefully, “but I am not really all that knowledgeable about speedsters. I know what I was able to learn from myself, and from studying the historical records of the Flash. But I am, er, male – ”

Eddie chokes on his drink.

“ – and the records of the Flash, even when they’re not more legend than fact, conspicuously do not mention this.” Eobard contemplates the implications of letting Barry’s condition become widely known and has to suppress a shiver of fear. “A decision that I support, all things considered.”

Iris appears to be having a similar thought; her acknowledging nod is subdued. “That does seem prudent.”

“Is the Flash recorded as having any descendants?” Eddie asks. All eyes turn to him, and he shrugs. “What I mean is, does the kid exist at all? Or is it totally off the future grid?”

“There was no record of the Flash’s identity, so, necessarily, no children were ever mentioned,” Eobard says slowly. “There was, however, a… sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” Barry raises his eyebrows, sounding disbelieving.

Eobard clears his throat uncomfortably. “He went by the name ‘Kid Flash’.”

There’s silence following this pronouncement. It’s broken at last by Eddie. “Well,” he says with false brightness. “I guess that answers _that_. The kid _is_ going to be born a speedster.”

Barry looks around him. Eobard knows what he’s seeing: the open concept floor plan, the liberal use of glass, the sharp corners, the tables and countertops placed at a lower height than typical to accommodate a wheelchair user…

“Well fuck,” he says, slumping. “At least I can childproof at superspeed.”

“What about him?” Iris says.

“Me?” Eobard clarifies.

Iris nods. “Are you in the history books?”

Now Eobard’s the one to look away. “Only as a villain.”

“Hey.” There’s a warmth on Eobard’s hand: Barry’s covered it with his own, where it sits on the table. Eobard uncurls his fist and lets their fingers intertwine. “Probably for the same reason we never admit Kid Flash is our actual kid. Or that I can have kids. Protective camouflage. Right? Why open ourselves up for danger?” Eobard finally looks at Barry, to be met by Barry’s sunny, encouraging, optimistic smile. “Just think – the bad guys will never see you coming. They may even try to team up with you to get me! You’ll be the best protection this kid could have, placed like that.”

Eobard offers Barry a small smile in thanks – and finds, to his surprise, that it’s not as hard as he would have expected it to be. “Well,” he manages to say. “When you put it that way, it does sound strategically advantageous.”

“Try saying that five times fast,” Eddie says.

There’s a light ripple of laughter from Iris and Barry. Eobard can’t join it, but he can keep smiling. The mood lightens.

“So,” Iris says, clearly determined to move the conversation to safer topics. “Have you thought of names yet?”

They talk of family names for a while. Maybe it’s just because Eobard’s records indicate that Kid Flash will be male, or maybe it’s because Iris has temporarily declared a truce, but the name _Nora_ doesn’t come up. _Henry_ is mentioned briefly, but passed over just as quickly. Eddie suggests that they name the child after Eobard’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and laughs brightest at his own joke when Eobard counts the generations back and realizes that, of course, that’s Eddie himself.

Dinner finishes, and Barry suggests they enjoy dessert in the living room. Autumn is setting in, and it’s getting too chilly outside to use the patio and firepit, but the gas logs flicker merrily, and the atmosphere among the four of them begins to approach something congenial.

“Does anyone else know?” Iris asks eventually, scraping up the last of her mango ice cream.

“That Eobard is back? Just Caitlin,” Barry says.

“You’re going to tell everyone else, though.”

“I have to.” Barry sighs. “And about the baby, too.”

“You haven’t told anyone else about the baby?” Eobard stops with his own spoon partway to his mouth. He hadn’t considered that the baby might be a secret within Team Flash. If it were up to Eobard, he’d be taking out a primetime ad. Of course, he’s made some questionable decisions in his time.

“Are you kidding?” Iris is staring at Eobard as if he’s grown a second head. “If my dad had found out, he’d have hunted your ass down no matter what time period you were in.”

Eobard winces. “Fair point.”

“I told Iris, because she already knew we’d slept together, and I needed my best friend,” Barry says. Iris softens at this, reaching out to pat Barry’s hand. Eobard decides not to examine what this makes him want to do. “And I told Caitlin because I needed medical advice. When Iris and Eddie got engaged I told her she could tell Eddie, too. That was right after you left.”

“And let me say I, at least, am very glad you’re back,” Eddie says wryly. “It was getting a little exhausting being the only Thawne on the scene. Genetic duty only gets you so far.”

“Thank you for all your help,” Eobard says. This seems to be unexpected, judging by the way Eddie sits back in his easy chair, startled, and Iris has to cough into her napkin.

“But that’s it so far,” Barry says, toying with his own ice cream. Eobard notes with concern that he’s only had two servings. “I haven’t told Joe. Or Cisco. Not sure which of them is going to be more pissed with me.”

“Oof,” Eobard says, heartfelt. “That’s going to be difficult.”

“I know which of them will be more pissed with _you,_ though,” Barry says. He’s smiling a small, domestic smile that Eobard has never seen before and falls instantly in love with. “Iris isn’t kidding. Joe’s going to attempt to murder you with his bare hands.”

“Please tell me I’m allowed to defend myself,” Eobard says weakly.

“If you touch my father – ” Iris starts, almost boiling right off the couch. She’s stopped by Eddie’s hand on her wrist.

“Even speedsters have a right to self-defense,” Eddie tells her.

“I don’t care,” Iris says. She’s looking at Eddie but she’s talking to Eobard. “If my father gets hurt, if he goes like Nora did – ”

Silence, instant and heavy, weighed down with nightmares. Barry puts his ice cream bowl down on the coffee table, and the clink of porcelain meeting glass sounds like a gunshot.

“Iris,” Barry says, voice raw, “I _asked_ you not to do that.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding it, even, sounding caught between being angry and almost in tears. “But I can’t risk it. I know what he’s capable of.”

“Do you?” Barry demands. “Were you there? Did you see him kill my mother? I did. And I was there the other time, too. When we made this.” His hands are resting on his stomach. Sitting, the bump could be anything. Could be a little beer belly, or even just the ruck of loose-hanging clothes. It isn’t, and everyone here knows it. “ _I_ know what he’s capable of. _All_ of it. You don’t, Iris. On some level you don’t even really believe I’m pregnant. You certainly don’t believe he didn’t take advantage of me to get me this way.”

“He _did_ ,” Iris says, words coming faster now. Eobard knows this, has studied enough humans to recognize the phenomenon: this is something Iris has bottled up – for the sake of her friendship, her love for Barry, her desire to help him, maybe – kept between her teeth for too long, without getting rid of it any other way, and now it’s all going to come out. It’s _got_ to come out.

Come out it does. “He _did_ take advantage of you,” she repeats. “Even if he didn’t know about you being – being – ”

“Female,” Barry supplies. He’s starting to sound angry now, too. “It’s not a dirty word, _Iris_.” He emphasizes the female name.

“You don’t know what it’s like, you’ve never been female before! There are all sorts of ways – things you’d have learned as a child – ”

“This isn’t like that.”

“He knew things you didn’t. He was lying to you about _everything_. You didn’t even know his real name. He was in a position of authority over you, you looked up to him, and so of course you thought you were willing when he put his hand on your shoulder or whatever it was and smiled and invited you back for coffee! But you weren’t, Barry! You couldn’t have been!”

There’s silence again. Eobard wants to reach out, to hold Barry or even just to take his hand, as Barry had done at the table, but he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what Barry will read into his touch. He looks at Barry instead, trying to communicate support with his gaze. And over Barry’s shoulder, Eobard sees his ancestor, looking at Iris in just the same way.

“Maybe I don’t know all the ways someone can take advantage of me now,” Barry says at last, tired and slumping. “But Iris, it wasn’t like that.”

“Of course it was,” Iris says. She’s hunched forward, like she’s going to curl up, or launch herself across the room. Her fists are on her knees, balls of potential energy waiting to strike. “The details may change but the foundation is the same.”

“I’d had a busy night,” Barry says. “No metahumans. Just a lot of criminals. But they were clever, some of them. They’d tried to defend themselves against me and they had a few good ideas.”

“Barry, you don’t have to…” Eddie starts. Barry looks at him and shakes his head. Then he goes back to looking at Iris.

“It was just Eobard back at the Cortex. Or Doctor Wells, as I was still calling him. No one else, because this was just a quiet night, a few robberies… no need for the full team. He helped me figure out how to get around the traps the carjackers had laid. I dumped them in prison and I was feeling good. Confident. You know? Lightning buzzing in my veins. Literally.”

Eobard knows the feeling. Remembers it and knows it again. How it makes him feel alive. Feel powerful. But also drives him to run, or to fight, because the lightning needs an outlet – it needs to jump to ground. It’s too much to keep bottled up, even in metahuman cells.

“I went back to the Cortex. Changed out of my suit, because the night was over. Took a shower. Thought everyone had gone home. But when I went to put my suit on the mannequin, Doctor Wells was still there. Just going over some data, he’d said.”

Yes, that’s what Eobard had said. But the truth is, of course, that Eobard had been waiting for Barry. He’d always waited for Barry. He’d needed less sleep than a standard human, even then, with his crippled speed. He’d preferred to spend his time on his obsession. So what else is new? He’d had no idea that that night would prove to be so memorable.

“Something changed in me that night,” Barry goes on, talking directly to Iris. “I looked at him and I just _wanted_. And then I realized that there was nothing stopping me from trying. So I tried. And that was that.”

“All out of the blue, you decided this.”

Now Barry sounds frustrated. “I’d always had a crush on him, you _know_ that. You bought me his biography and teased me about it for a month. It’s just that until that night I would never have dared. I didn’t really realize, until then, just how much had changed. How much I’d become. How much more I was willing to dare.”

“He made you think that,” Iris accuses. “He manipulated you.”

“Into having self-confidence?” Barry holds out his hands, palm up. “Even if that’s true, how is that different from any other mentor figure? You never accused Mason Bridge of manipulating you.”

“Funny you should bring him up,” Iris says. “Remind me, what happened to him? Oh, that’s right. Your _inspirational mentor_ murdered him.”

“Okay, I think this has gone far enough,” Eddie begins.

“No, it hasn’t,” Iris snaps. “Because Barry is talking about letting this psychopath back into his life. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? He’s not just here for a visit, Jerry Springer-style, oops, he _is_ the father. He’s back to stay. You _want_ him to stay. He murdered your mother and a dozen other people, and now you want him to change diapers and handle night feedings. My God, Barry, how can you even think about it? What’s he going to do to the baby the minute your back is turned?”

Barry stills. He turns his hands palm-down and places them on his knees, deliberately.

“Please leave my home,” he says, toneless.

“No,” Iris says, suddenly near tears. “Barry, I didn’t – Barry, I’m not the one who needs to leave. _He_ needs to leave. Make him leave. Please.”

“I can’t,” Eobard says.

The attention in the room swerves abruptly to Eobard, like a pendulum swinging.

“What?” Iris says. “You’re – are you saying you’re trapped again?”

“No.” Eobard swallows. This isn’t how he’d planned to tell Barry, to tell anyone, but – “I need to be here. Or else Barry’s going to die.”

Iris puts a hand over her mouth and makes a choking sound. Barry is looking at Eobard, eyes wide and suddenly very deep. Eddie’s the one who asks, “You mean – in the future? In 2024?” He glances around the room. “We saw the newspaper headline.”

“I mean sooner than that.” Now Eobard dares to reach for Barry. Barry lets Eobard take his hand, but doesn’t move otherwise. “I saw it. When I went back to my own – to the future. The headline had changed. Barry dies sooner.” Eobard glances at the nearest pickup. “Gideon – show us the future.”

Eddie almost jumps out of his chair when Gideon answers, “Yes, Professor.” Eobard gives him an apologetic look. Then the large picture over the fireplace shimmers, the hidden holographic projector spinning up, and the headline appears, hanging over the coffee table in all its ghostly horror.

_FLASH MISSING, VANISHES WITHOUT A TRACE._

Iris is still, eyes rapidly moving as she scans the text. Eddie’s gaze seems fixed to a single spot. If Eobard were betting, he’d bet it’s riveted on the byline, which has likewise changed: the article is now credited to _Iris West-Thawne_.

Good for Grandpa Eddie, Eobard thinks bleakly. Maybe in this universe it will last.

“You didn’t tell me,” Barry whispers.

“I was going to,” Eobard says. “When I went to see you at the CCPD. Then when you told me about the baby, I…” he hates to admit it. “I forgot. Briefly.”

Barry nods slowly. “You said you were going to stay,” he recalls. “Before I told you about the baby. You said you realized you’d been wrong to leave. Is this why?”

“Only part of it,” Eobard says, willing Barry to understand.

“This doesn’t say how,” Iris says, breaking her silence. “This article. It doesn’t say how Barry dies.”

“It doesn’t even say he dies,” Eddie points out. “Just that he vanishes.”

Iris shakes her head. “I couldn’t publish that he’d died, it would cause a panic,” she says. Her voice is quiet but firm. “I agree with Thawne’s – with Eobard’s interpretation of this article. The way I wrote it – this is me, knowing Barry’s gone, preparing Central City for the loss of their hero.”

“I don’t know how he dies,” Eobard says. “Not exactly. But I suspect the loss of his speed simply allows an enemy metahuman to overpower him.”

Iris’ eyes cut sharply to Barry. “The loss of your speed?”

Barry is still looking at Eobard. “You saw this in the future and came back to save me,” he says. “You talked to Caitlin – you were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Then you tried to figure it out yourself. And when that didn’t work, that’s when you came to talk to me.”

“I thought at first I could help without you knowing,” Eobard admits. “I thought it was a matter of tweaking the timeline, or eliminating a specific threat.”

“And you thought I’d _prefer_ it that way?” Barry’s voice cracks slightly. “Prefer never knowing you were around?”

Eobard looks down, to where Barry is still letting Eobard hold Barry’s hand in his. “You had told me you wanted me to go,” he says quietly. Ashamed, now, to think he’d allowed himself to be chased off so easily. Years of research into the Flash, years of experiments to give himself the power of a speedster, years trapped in this century trying to shape Barry’s life into the best it possibly could be after the mess Eobard had made – and at the end of it he’d let Barry run him off, just because Barry had failed to say a few simple words. Words that, Eobard is beginning to realize, Barry had had no idea Eobard had wanted him to say.

Eobard is not the only speedster with a little too much pride, and a little too little practice forgiving.

“I was wrong,” Eobard says. “As soon as I learned that I came to find you.”

Across the coffee table, Eddie clears his throat delicately. “Shall Iris and I head out?” he suggests.

Iris starts to nod, looking subdued and as near to chastened as Eobard has ever seen her, but then she sits up straighter and puts a hand on Eddie’s knee to hold him back. “Before we leave – what’s causing the loss of your speed, Barry?” She leaves the obvious other question unspoken: _and why didn’t you tell us?_

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t ready to talk about it,” Barry says, answering it anyway. “And as for why – we’re not sure. I hoped Eobard might know, but he doesn’t.”

Eobard shakes his head. “Caitlin’s guess is as good as mine,” he repeats.

“What is Caitlin’s guess?” Eddie asks.

Barry smiles weakly. “The baby,” he says. “Especially if it’s going to be born a speedster – Caitlin’s guess is that the baby needs my connection to the speed force as a second umbilical cord. And while the baby’s using it I can’t use it.”

Iris grasps the material point of this theory immediately. “Does that mean it’s going to get worse?”

Barry nods. “It’s _been_ getting worse,” he admits. “I’m slower now than I was a month ago. And Eobard got some of the data from the future records Caitlin’s going to make. I get slower and slower.”

“If Caitlin’s theory is correct – and it fits the facts – Barry’s speed should go back to normal as soon as he’s given birth,” Eobard hastens to add.

“But first he’s got to live that long,” Iris says.

Eobard inclines his head. “Yes.”

Iris holds Eobard’s gaze. “Forget what I said earlier,” she says. “Don’t you dare go anywhere. And if something does happen to Barry, I expect to have to step over your corpse to get to him, are we clear?”

“Iris,” Barry sighs.

“Crystal,” Eobard assures her. It is nothing less than what he expects of himself.

“Okay,” Eddie says, “I think that’s as far as we’re going to go for the moment.” He goes to stand, and this time Iris doesn’t try to stop him. She lets him help her up, in fact. “I’m guessing you’re going to talk to Joe and Cisco tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan,” Barry says.

“Let us know if you need any damage control on Joe. And we want in on whatever ends up being the Barry Protection Plan.”

“Of course,” Eobard says.

“Okay,” Eddie says for the second time. “Good night, then. Thank you for dinner.”

There’s the briefest of pauses. Then Iris takes her social cue, and far more gracefully than many others would have managed it. “Yes, thank you,” she says. “Everything was lovely.”

This is a lie, naturally, but since it’s not the kind that leaves anyone dead or crying, no one calls her on it. Eobard and Barry see their guests to the door. Within a few surreal moments, filled with ordinary suburban middle-class small talk, Iris and Eddie are gone.

Eobard immediately turns to Barry. “How are you – ”

Barry holds up a hand. “I’m fine,” he says.

This is another lie, and it’s the kind that might end up with Barry crying where he thinks Eobard isn’t watching, so Eobard doesn’t let it pass. “I said I’d stay,” he reminds Barry, as gently as his nature permits. “I meant for the bad parts too. And not just the fighting-metahuman bad parts.”

Barry makes a sound that’s an odd combination of a hiccup and a laugh. “Did you have any idea?” he asks. “That night in the cortex – were you waiting for me? Did you expect me to make a move on you?”

“I _was_ waiting for you,” Eobard says, carefully, because honesty is vital here, but he knows too much of honesty, offered wrongly, is worse than a lie. “But not because I expected you to make a move. I had no idea that you would ever make any kind of move. I thought your heart too much laid at Iris’ feet to ever think you’d consider me.”

“You knew I read your autobiography,” Barry insists. “You knew I had a hero-worship thing going on.”

“You’re forgetting,” Eobard says. “So did I.”

This is clearly a new thought. Barry’s lips part, soundlessly, and his eyes widen in surprise.

“Yes, if I’d thought about it, the fact of your admiration might have suggested that you could entertain amorous thoughts about me,” Eobard goes on. “But from my point of view, the relationship ran the other way. I’d read _your_ biography. All of them. Studied you for decades. Had my own case of hero-worship, though it went wrong long before we – ” he gestures between them. “Before these versions of ourselves ever met. But the thing is, when you’ve admired someone from afar for so long – even when you meet in person, it never occurs to you that the other person might actually be interested in _you_. Except maybe as someone to glance benevolently down on as you pass on by.”

Barry’s lips close again. He nods, thoughtfully.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says.

Eobard looks at him, searching. “Do you mean sleep, or – ”

“I don’t know,” Barry admits. He glances at the front door and shakes his head. “But at the very least I don’t want to sleep alone tonight. So. Let’s go to bed. And find out what happens from there.”

“All right,” Eobard says, and he’s not just thinking of tonight.


	5. Chapter 5

After the dinner with Iris and Eddie had managed to careen wildly around the edges of disaster without ever quite tipping over into a full-blown explosion, Eobard finds himself approaching the prospect of confessing both his continued existence in this time period and fatherhood of Barry’s baby to the rest of Team Flash with a kind of resigned fatalism. This is somewhat justified by the actual events. Both Joe and Cisco take the news more calmly than anticipated.

Cisco, perhaps predictably, is almost more hurt by Barry’s reticence that Eobard’s presence. He’s developed a regrettable tendency to flinch whenever Eobard moves too quickly in his presence, but puts a brave face on it and declares that he’s all about second chances. If Eobard wants to prove he can make good, Cisco’s all for it. As long as Eobard understands Cisco has been working on his Vibe powers and intends to test-drive them on Eo’s ass should Eo try any funny business.

“Eo?” Eobard says blankly, frozen in the face of this new and horrible nickname.

Which only feeds Cisco’s mania. “Oh yeah, man, that’s your name now, I called it. Named you! Hah!” He waves a tool around too enthusiastically. “Who’s the head meta now, huh?”

Of course, when Eobard had checked in on Cisco later, via security camera, Cisco had just been sitting in a chair staring blankly ahead. The enticing piles of spare parts and half-finished projects scattered around the lab had been utterly failing to hold his attention. Eobard had had a discreet word with Caitlin, who has promised to enlist the aid of a mental health professional of her acquaintance. And if that doesn’t work, Eobard is borrowing someone from the glorious future to make a most unorthodox house call. Cisco has always had a tendency to swing between two extremes, and Eobard’s return seems to be exaggerating the effects. Eobard would hate to see an unfortunate quirk of brain chemistry hold back a brilliant mind like Cisco’s. There are at least three major inventions over the next three decades with the Ramon name on them.

Joe West is straightforward. He hears Barry out with a stern expression, arms crossed, looking about as yielding as a rock. When Barry stutters to a halt, though, all he does is nod.

“You,” he says to Eobard. “You gonna take care of him the way he needs?”

Eobard is tempted to say something snarky; he doesn’t. He does, however, take a gamble. “You’ve seen my actions for the last year,” he says. “Haven’t I been doing that?”

Joe nods. “If you murder someone who doesn’t deserve it, we’re going to have words,” he says. “And if Henry Allen ever needs something a day in his life, you’re gonna give it to him. Money, future tech, whatever.”

“Yes,” Eobard agrees.

“Now, if you murder someone who’s trying to hurt Barry, you call me first thing. Don’t try to cover it up yourself. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Eobard considers pointing out the number of murders he’s committed that Joe West has no idea about. Then he thinks better of it and just nods instead.

Joe, apparently satisfied with Eobard, turns his gaze to Barry. “You tell Iris yet?”

Barry grimaces. “Last night.”

“How’d she take it?”

“Not too well.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Joe stands up and collects his hat. “I’d better go talk to her. Barry, congrats again. Eobard, murder – ” He makes an _I’m-watching-you_ gesture. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Barry and Eobard chorus.

Partway to the door Joe pauses and turns back, pointing to Eobard. “Family dinner. Friday nights at 8. Be there. Bring a side dish.” He pauses. “Something we can all eat. No crazy future stuff.”

“Understood,” Eobard says meekly.

And that’s that. Everyone knows. Then there’s nothing to do but… wait.

Wait, and worry, and, apparently, decorate the nursery.

“I was originally thinking a jungle theme, but now we know it’s a boy.” Barry stands in the empty room he’d apparently already picked out and looks around, hands on his hips. “We could do rocket ships.”

“I would be in favor of a space theme regardless of gender,” Eobard says. He’s trying to remember what this room had used to be. A home gym, maybe? He’s not even sure. Most of the rooms in this house had been for show. It will make a good nursery, though. It has a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, which already has Eobard thinking about how to fill the _other_ attached bedroom. Which reminds him: “And we don’t _know_ ‘Kid Flash’ was a boy. It could have been misdirection. Or just faulty reporting. They were young enough that it would have been hard to tell the difference from the other side of a speedsuit.”

“You’re right, though,” Barry says. He’s looking up at the ceiling. “Screw gender. Space theme it is.”

‘Space theme’ apparently involves some truly awful glow-in-the-dark stars. Eobard disapproves of them entirely; they don’t really glow, and they’re green, for goodness’ sake. He wants to design a better version of the product. Barry overrules him. Apparently nostalgia is involved. Eobard relents, but only on the condition he’s allowed to paint the mural.

Barry apparently doesn’t realize that, for a properly scaled model, that means putting Saturn in the hallway, Uranus in the living room, and Neptune in the kitchen. Oops.

“Think of it as child-proofing,” Eobard says.

“Where are you going to paint Planet Nine?” Barry demands.

“Barry!” Eobard pretends to be shocked. “The timeline, please! No planets your science hasn’t discovered yet.”

“Aha, so it _is_ out there!”

“I didn’t say that.” Eobard makes a mental note to hide the can of brown paint he’s already reserved for its discovery in 2027.

Not every day is a whirlwind of painting, crib assembly, and crime fighting. Sometimes Caitlin wields her magic ultrasound wand and makes Eobard’s breath stop as he witnesses the miracle that is Barry. Sometimes Barry lets Eobard bring home Big Belly Burger for dinner, and eats his three triple-triples on the couch, pressed up against Eobard, while Eobard indulges in the shameful delight of a belly rub. And sometimes Barry lets Eobard go lower, which only seems to get hotter the bigger that belly gets.

“I think you have a pregnancy fetish,” Barry says to him one day, well on the far side of midnight, after round three has finished and Eobard is petting Barry everywhere he can reach but mostly on that decided bump.

“You might be right,” Eobard has to admit. There’s just something about Barry this way – something Eobard can’t even put into words. Something to do with trust and hope and second chances. With the future. With something between them that Eobard is afraid, even now, to name. Or even to think about too often, lest it disappear.

So instead Eobard says, “You know, this is a pretty big house. Lots of extra rooms. Bedrooms, even.”

“Let me get _this_ kid out of me first,” Barry groans. There’s something performative about that groan, though, and when Eobard looks up to check, he finds Barry’s smiling.

“I think you might have a bit of a fetish too.”

“Not for this exactly,” Barry says, letting Eobard rest his head on Barry’s shoulder. “But for what it does to you.”

Eobard smirks.

“The sex is nice too,” Barry admits. “But mostly… this.” He waves a lazy hand, indicating the dim room, the stars outside their window, the quiet peace between them. “It brought you back to me. And it turns out that Eobard Thawne, feared villain, is a cuddler. And a very, _very_ doting father-to-be.” Barry’s shrug is easy to feel, beneath Eobard’s cheek. “I guess I like being doted on.”

Eobard rolls onto his elbow and leans in to kiss his speedster. “I can work with that.”

* * *

Iris comes by to visit, voluntarily, somewhere around month 5. They’ve seen her since that disastrous dinner, of course – Eobard has been obeying both the letter and the spirit of Joe West’s Rules For Being My Adopted Son’s Baby Daddy, which includes attending Family Dinners with an appropriate side dish in tow – but only in group settings, and only when it’s otherwise unavoidable. Eobard knows this has been bothering Barry; Barry and Iris are very close, or had been, before Eobard had upended their lives the second time. And Eobard has been doing his best to encourage Barry and Iris to spend time together without him. But Eobard _lives_ with Barry now – the condo remains uninhabited, the mystery of its retained ownership still unresolved – so Iris can’t just drop by.

Except that she does. On a Wednesday.

She brings ice cream.

“I think it’s time we started planning our media strategy,” she announces. “I know Eobard said that he’s only recorded in the history books as a villain, but that can’t really be the end of the story. Not if he’s going to be the one protecting Central City, and Barry, from enemy metahumans for the next four plus months.”

“Four _plus_ months? Please don’t jinx me,” Barry begs, rummaging through the shopping bags – Iris has not only bought ice cream, it transpires, she’s bought four half-gallons of ice cream, which is good, because it means she and Eobard might actually get to enjoy a bowl apiece. “You realize we actually have no idea how long a speedster pregnancy is? We’re just _guessing_ it’s the same length as a human’s.”

“Maybe it will be shorter,” Eobard suggests optimistically, bringing a stack of bowls over to the island, where Iris has deposited the ice cream. “Maybe the neonatal period will be shorter.”

“Well, there will be some amount of time where you’re effectively out of commission,” Iris says to Barry. “Which I assume means that _you_ – ” shifting her gaze to Eobard – “are going to be donning the gaudy rags of justice and standing forth.”

“Please don’t actually print that about me,” Eobard says.

“I’m just saying. We have to work out our strategy. Are you going to wear the yellow suit? Are we going to acknowledge that you’re the same as the mysterious yellow-suited speedster who terrorized Central City earlier, but now you’re a good guy? Are you going to wear a red suit instead and pretend to be Barry and we’ll sidestep the entire question? We need to figure these things out.”

Eobard is frozen with one hand reaching for the mint chocolate chip. “A good guy,” he says, astonished.

“Yeah, well.” Iris is suddenly extremely distractible. She flips her hair, then helps herself to a bowl and starts scooping out some of the banana ice cream. “That’s what you always wanted, right? When you were a kid? To be a hero like the Flash? Well.” She carts her ice cream over to the kitchen table, sets it down, and pulls out her laptop. “This is your big chance.”

Eobard is still standing there, mouth open. He’s staring at Iris, but as she focuses on her laptop, his gaze switches to Barry. It becomes, ever so slightly, accusing.

Barry smiles. He’s finished the chocolate fudge swirl and is halfway through the rest of Iris’ banana ice cream. But he takes a break long enough to say, “Eobard. Of _course_ I talk to my best friend about my man.”

Eobard blinks.

“And she’s right,” Barry goes on. The banana ice cream is a distant memory. He eyes the mint chocolate chip, an apex predator lazy with satiation. “Besides. How many people get to redefine how history views them? This is your chance for that, too.”

“You want me to do that?” Eobard manages to ask. “Rewrite our entire – there was a wing of the Flash museum dedicated to our rivalry. Our enmity defined us both.”

Barry deigns to leave the bulk of the mint chocolate chip behind, an investment in future snacking. Instead he gives Eobard a peculiarly domestic look. It’s an outgrowth of the domestic smile Eobard had first seen the last time Iris and Eobard had been in this house at the same time, and Eobard has since learned that it carries two meanings: _stop being so dense_ and _we should go to bed early tonight_. Barry follows up the look by resting a hand pointedly on his no-longer-flat belly. And then, just in case Eobard has somehow still missed the point, Barry makes it explicit. “I think there’s something else defining us now, Eobard. And I’d like the historical record to reflect that, to whatever limited extent it can.”

“Barry,” Eobard says helplessly.

“Maybe it won’t make a difference for us. Our personal timelines are settled, and as speedsters they’re unlikely to be changed,” Barry says. “But sometimes I like to imagine a world where you grow up learning about a Flash who had a _partner_ in a yellow suit, not an enemy. Who do you think you’d be, in that world? Who would I then have become?”

Barry’s words, gentle and implacable, fall into Eobard’s imagination. Unwillingly he imagines it. If there had been someone like Barry describes, a partner – not a sidekick, a Kid Flash, but a full adult standing at Barry’s side – Eobard’s fantasies would have had a specific target. He wouldn’t just have wanted to meet Barry, to help him, to be his friend. Eobard would have wanted to be that person. That specific person. And when he’d figured out the speed formula? Turned himself into that person? Then, when Eobard had met Barry –

Barry wouldn’t have rejected him. Barry would have _expected_ him. Would have known, from Barry’s own journeys up and down the timeline, that there is a missing place at his side, and welcomed Eobard’s arrival to fulfil it.

Everything would have been different.

This is all too much to think about. Eobard looks away. His gaze falls on the ice cream scoop. For lack of anything better to do, Eobard picks it up, noticing distantly that his hand is trembling.

“Here.” The scoop is gently plucked from his hand; a moment later Barry presents Eobard with a bowl of mint chocolate chip, a spoon, and a gentle nudge. “Have some sugar. And work with Iris. We don’t have to rewrite history tonight. But just so you know.” Barry smiles up at Eobard, a sweet look that’s its own kind of kiss. “I wouldn’t change what we have. I had the chance to, and I didn’t.” He shrugs. “It’s just nice to think. You know? Leave something better for those who come after us.”

Something better for those who come after them. Like their children.

Eobard can’t quite speak, but he nods. And Barry gives him that smile again.

“Go on,” Barry urges, gesturing towards Iris, who is buried deep in InDesign as the most convenient way of pretending she isn’t paying any attention to the domestic drama playing out around the kitchen island. “I’m going to watch a movie. Wake me up when you’re done and we can go to bed.”

Barry steals a kiss – and the rest of the mint chocolate chip – and walks off before Eobard can recover enough to respond. Maybe Barry doesn’t need to hear a response. Maybe he already knows, without words, exactly what Eobard is feeling.

They’ve always defined each other. Known each other. Better than they know themselves, sometimes.

Iris coughs discreetly. “So I thought we’d want to make the handover as seamless as possible,” she begins. “Thankfully I was never too specific about you in my previous pieces, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make it seem like you never really left…”

Eobard nods mechanically, coming to sit by Iris. Who waxes eloquent, elaborating on her plan. She’s thoroughly mistress of her subject. Once they settle the key points, Iris will have no trouble spinning the sort of stories that myths are founded on.

That’s _her_ gift. The way she leaves something good for those who come after.

Eobard thinks, after all of this is settled, that he’s going to give Iris a gift. A very personal gift of a very much beloved book. In Eobard’s timeline, _Whatever Happened To The Fastest Man Alive?: The Life and Times of The Flash_ , by Iris West-Allen, had been published posthumously – a lightly edited release of a complete draft found among her papers after her death. Why she’d chosen to hold it back, Eobard doesn’t know. Though he thinks, now, that maybe he’ll be able to ask her, one day. He thinks that maybe the equivalent book by Iris West-Thawne might find its way to print sooner. And he thinks that, either way, Iris deserves to know how much her words are going to shape the future – and the past.

For now, though, Eobard puts all of that aside and focuses on the present. “I think I’m going to want to keep my suit,” he tells Iris. “I think I want to acknowledge that there are two of us.”

Iris nods, pulling up a new document. “Then let’s figure out how to introduce your change of heart to the public,” she says, and starts typing.

* * *

“Okay, if you run another half mile and then turn left – ”

“The abandoned quarry? Really, Barry?”

There’s a smile in Barry’s voice, clearly audible through the speed distortion and the crackling lightning thanks to the magic of future technology. “All those twists and turns will mean Boomerang can’t get a clear shot. _You_ can phase through matter. Lead him into the depths, get him lost, then grab him from behind.”

“Oh, all _right_ ,” Eobard sighs, banking left. It’s not how he’d prefer to do it, but he supposes that Barry is enjoying his chance to call the shots.

There’s a muffled series of sounds like Barry talking off-mike, and then his voice comes back. “Cell C12 is ready for its new occupant. See you soon, honey.”

_Honey?_ Eobard nearly gets his head taken off by a boomerang as he gawks over that. Still, he thinks – doubling back and phasing down a level to land neatly on Captain Boomerang; Barry is getting better at this speedster thing, but he still has a great deal of two-dimensional thinking – as pet names go, it’s not terrible. Is there really a pet name Eobard would _prefer_?

Eobard ponders this question as he deposits Captain Boomerang, spitting and swearing, into his new temporary home. “Relax, you’ll be out soon enough with good behavior,” Eobard sighs, slapping the lock for the door and watching the force field shimmer to life. “You should be thanking me. If I hadn’t stopped you _before_ you’d broken into the jewelry shop you’d be in there much longer.”

As it is, the worst charge they’ll have on Harkness is intent, which a decent lawyer will plead down to a misdemeanor, and Eobard will be back to dodging boomerangs in six months. Or Barry will. No one knows how fast Barry will be back to fighting trim after having the baby. Of course, no one knows how soon Barry will _have_ the baby. But if he hits the same nine-month mark that human women do, Eobard will be a father in another ten weeks – and Barry could be back out fighting crime in as few as sixteen.

Eobard dislikes this thought. He dislikes it even more than the nickname ‘Eo’, which is impressive, since Cisco has been annoying Eobard with it at every opportunity for the last four months. If Eobard had his way, Barry would stay safely at home with their children and leave all the dangerous work to Eobard.

It’s possible that Eobard is not being entirely rational in the face of impending fatherhood.

But there are benefits, too – the way the STAR Labs security system is now set to allow Eobard in, saving him from having to use the various back doors; the nods or acknowledgements of the other members of Team Flash, who have largely, in spite of themselves, fallen back into their own habits as regards ‘Doctor Wells’; and best of all, the way Barry smiles at Eobard over the bank of computers in the cortex, chair pushed slightly back to accommodate his now-quite-large bump.

In a twinkling Eobard is at Barry’s side, preventing Barry from sliding back to stand up. He leans over to steal a kiss. “You’re getting good at this,” he tells Barry when they part. “Being the voice in my ear. Maybe you’ve found your true calling.”

“You’re just trying to get me to stay out of the field,” Barry says knowingly.

“True,” Eobard admits without a trace of guilt. “Is it working?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“This is why I think we should have multiple kids.”

“Eobard Thawne.” Barry seems unaccountably delighted. “Are you trying to keep me barefoot and pregnant?”

“And tied to the kitchen sink,” Eobard agrees, unrepentant in the face of such blatant encouragement. He leans in closer, enjoying being the taller one for once – so much of their relationship has had Eobard in the chair, and Barry looming over him. “Or at least the cortex computers. Shall I show you what advantages there are in such a position?”

Barry looks intrigued, and Eobard is sure he’s about to receive an affirmative answer, but the moment is shattered by the sound of a marker hitting a whiteboard. “Jesus Christ, you two, it’s bad enough that you have to splash your freaking fifties married couple power dynamics kinks all over the damn place, can you at least not have sex on the computers that we all have to use?”

Eobard leans back and sighs. Cisco Ramon’s angry voice is not at all conducive to amorous outcomes. “I built these computers,” Eobard reminds him. “I own them. I own this entire building. I also own the machines that will sanitize every surface, so maybe…”

“Actually, Barry owns them,” Cisco shoots back. “You left them to him in your will, Mr. Not-Actually-Harrison-Wells. So stop trying to steer him down the flowery path and we can all go home happy.”

Eobard can’t resist. “Not as happy as I wanted to be,” he says, leering for good measure.

“Ugh.” Cisco’s look is distinctly unimpressed. “I’m heading out. The containment field is secure down in the accelerator, all our naughty little inmates tucked in for the night.”

“Do you have day duty tomorrow?” Barry asks. Cisco and Caitlin take turns having someone on-site monitoring the inmates around the clock, though usually the automation handles everything.

“Nah, Caitlin does. I’ll see you tomorrow night for patrol.”

“Kay. Night, Cisco.”

“Night.” Cisco looks at Eobard. “Later, Thawne.”

“Have a good day, Cisco.”

Eobard waits until Cisco is gone, then turns back to Barry. “Where were we?” he murmurs.

Barry, alas, doesn’t respond in kind. He’s still looking vaguely at the exit through which Cisco has just departed, thoroughly lost in thought.

“Earth-2 to Barry,” Eobard calls softly.

“Hm?” Barry blinks, focusing back on Eobard. “Oh.”

“You’re a million miles away.” Eobard leans against the bank of computers. “What’s on your mind?”

Barry’s smile is soft and fond and entirely directed at Eobard, which makes Eobard’s chest do things he hasn’t authorized. “I was just thinking,” he says, “of how you took care of us, even after you left.”

“Took care of you?”

“Cisco and Caitlin,” Barry says. “And me, of course, but I was thinking of them. That’s why they stuck around, really. Here at STAR Labs, I mean. Even after they felt so betrayed. They stayed.”

“The generous salary doesn’t hurt,” Eobard snorts. The STAR Labs Trust continues to pay both of them handsome salaries as long as they remain on the books as ‘maintainers and upkeepers of the STAR Labs legacy site’.

“You mean the way you made sure they don’t have to choose between Team Flash and paying the rent,” Barry says gently. “The way you made sure they could pay the rent at all. You knew that their employment prospects were seriously damaged by the particle accelerator explosion. Most of the other employees were fine, but their names were linked with the explosion almost as much as yours was – they’ll have trouble finding jobs elsewhere. And you knew that, and made sure they’d be okay.”

Eobard suddenly finds the equations on the whiteboard incredibly interesting. “Their assistance made it possible to build the accelerator in considerably less time than if I’d had to do it all alone,” he mutters. “Fair pay for fair work.”

“I think that’s Eobard-ese for ‘I accidentally started to care about them’,” Barry grins.

Eobard remembers telling Cisco that Cisco had shown him what having a son was like. He also remembers Cisco telling Eobard that Eobard had killed him in another timeline. He thinks about the baby Barry is carrying, and wonders if Cisco has ever thought about Eobard and that baby in the same way that Iris had – _what’s he going to do to the baby the minute your back is turned?_

He is suddenly very uncomfortable with this conversation.

Barry is going on, blissfully unaware. “I should have realized sooner,” he’s saying, in tones of soft realization. “You told us all you cared about us – with words, yes, but with actions, too. Not just Cisco and Caitlin. Me. You left me the house. And the money. That was one of the reasons I thought you knew about the baby – I thought you were giving me somewhere for him to grow up, the money to give him everything a forensic scientist’s salary wouldn’t. But you didn’t know. You weren’t thinking of our child. You were just thinking of me. Taking care of me.” Barry stands up now, leaning over Eobard and kissing him. “Thank you.”

They haven’t said _I love you_ yet. But the way Barry says _thank you_ is basically a declaration. It makes Eobard’s heart beat faster and his breath catch.

“Barry,” he says. “You – do you never doubt me?”

Barry’s eyes crinkle. “Before you came back I doubted you all the time,” he says plainly. “Since you agreed to stay? Not for a minute.”

“I don’t deserve that.”

“Nevertheless.”

There are many reasons why Eobard doesn’t deserve this – one of them being that he lets Barry go back to kissing him, rather than explaining all of those reasons to Barry, at the end of which Barry would doubtless prefer not to be kissing Eobard. But it’s a foolish little reason that sticks in Eobard’s mind, even as the kissing proceeds to groping proceeds to the next logical step beyond groping. Not the death of Nora Allen, or – in another timeline – of Cisco Ramon, or the ever-present danger of Time Wraiths that Eobard brings on them just by existing in the past. Eobard’s sins aren’t haunting him. For once, it’s Eobard’s omissions that haunt him – not what he has done, but what he has left undone.

He hadn’t left Barry the house.

He hadn’t left Barry a trust.

And for the first time in months, the fog of disbelieving happiness parts enough that Eobard remembers to wonder: _then who did?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays! This story will be taking a break for the next three update days so I can enjoy my Christmas travel and break :) It will return on January 2nd. See you all in the new year, and remember - comments are an author's favorite present!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year to everyone! We're back to the regular posting schedule as of today.

“Eobard, what are you _doing_?”

This question, plaintively, from Barry, who has come home from work to find Eobard with his head in the ceiling, mucking about with some of the wiring in the house.

“Security system upgrades,” Eobard says. “Hand me that voltmeter?”

Barry passes Eobard the tool in question, frowning. “I thought this place had the best security system the glorious future could provide.”

“Not quite,” Eobard says. “It had the best future the glorious future could provide when last I left said glorious future. But technology moves onward, the future is bright, and home security improves. This one is better.”

“You mean this one is from farther in the future,” Barry says shrewdly.

Eobard nods, though given that his head and shoulders are wedged into the ducting, Barry can’t exactly see this. “Yes,” he says.

“Is this some kind of male speedster nesting behavior?”

“How would I know?” Eobard asks, momentarily diverted by the implications of this question. “I didn’t realize we’d diverged from standard human biology until I saw a blob on an ultrasound screen.”

“Fair point,” Barry concedes. “Are you going to be long? I’m hungry. Thought we might grab dinner together.”

“Give me a second and I’m yours.”

Barry sighs. “You’re going to be back to this after dinner, aren’t you.”

“…Yes.”

“All right. But I want you in bed with me tonight. No excuses.”

“Of course,” Eobard smiles, already planning to sneak out again once Barry’s asleep.

Over the next few days, Eobard has reason to be grateful that Barry seems to view Eobard’s behavior with tolerant amusement. Barry is clearly convinced by his own theory that Eobard is nesting. According to the half of Barry’s phone conversations with Iris that Eobard overhears, Barry is tickled pink that the male speedster is the one to nest rather than the female.

“Though I might end up doing it too,” he concedes to her with a sigh. “If you come over and find me up on a stepladder, please talk some sense into me.”

Iris’ response is inaudible, but Eobard is sure he can count on her.

Actually, though Eobard _is_ upgrading the security system, that’s not the point. The point is – someone wanted Barry in this house. Eobard doesn’t know who. And he doesn’t know _why_. He’s paranoid that there’s something hidden here, something buried among his careful wiring and skillfully designed intruder repulsion systems. Something that poses a danger to Barry and the baby.

“No sign of anomalies, Professor,” Gideon says, a week later, for what’s probably the hundredth time. “All systems operating normally. All physical emplacements are identical to specifications.”

Eobard runs a hand through his hair. Nothing. Still nothing. “And you haven’t come any closer to figuring out who changed my will?”

Gideon sounds almost apologetic. “As before, Professor – all data indicates that _you_ did.”

“Damn,” Eobard mutters, pacing. “Whoever they are, they’re good.”

“Or perhaps they do not exist.”

“They exist.” Eobard stops in front of the holoprojector, studying the house’s schematics again. “ _Someone_ filed that will. And in little over a month, unless I stop them, that same someone could be the one to – ” Eobard stops talking. He doesn’t want to say it out loud.

“The two events could be unrelated,” Gideon says.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Eobard says. “Show me the future.”

Obediently, Gideon does. The headline is unchanged. Which means that nothing Eobard has done so far affects the outcome at all.

“I have to know,” Eobard whispers. “I can’t leave it to chance.”

Gideon’s hesitation is palpable. “I calculate a thirty-eight point four percent chance that attempting to visit the moment of Barry Allen’s death will destabilize the timeline beyond repair. There is a further eighteen percent chance that the timeline as a whole could be repaired, but the personal timeline of Mr. Allen would have to be deleted in order to accomplish the repair.”

Those numbers _have_ been changing, but not by much. And they’re still much too high for Eobard to risk.

“Maybe there’s something in the historical record that will give us a clue,” Eobard says. “Something we missed.”

“Our search was thorough.”

“Maybe there’s something there now that wasn’t there before.”

There’s a pause. Then: “I calculate a twenty-nine point eight percent chance that new data would be available if accessed from a point farther up the time stream.”

Eobard’s chin comes up. “Meaning if we went back to the future, we might learn something new. Something that could save Barry’s life.”

“Affirmative.”

“Start crunching the numbers,” Eobard says.

* * *

Eobard has learned a thing or three in his return to the past. Before he leaves, he goes into the room he shares with Barry, wakes Barry up, and tells Barry where he’s going.

Ideally, the trip will only take a moment. Ideally, Barry will never know Eobard is gone. But things go wrong sometimes when traveling through time, and Eobard knows better than to let Barry wake up to find Eobard gone – worse, gone back to the future he’d promised to leave behind.

“You’ll come right back, though,” Barry says. His gaze is steady on Eobard, unwavering.

“Right back,” Eobard promises. “To this exact second.”

“If you don’t,” Barry says, “I’m coming after you.”

“Barry – ”

“I’m coming after you,” Barry repeats. “Because you’ll be in danger, and you’ll need me.”

Eobard reaches out to brush a stray lock of hair back – an excuse to touch Barry, and to marvel at the chances in him, too, the way he’s gone softer around the edges somehow, as if more than just his belly has rounded out. “Will I?”

“There’s no other reason you wouldn’t come right back,” Barry says simply.

Eobard’s departure is somewhat delayed, at this point.

But he’s too worried about Barry to delay for long, and soon enough the lightning is crackling in his ears and over his eyes, turning the world briefly crimson. Then Eobard is tumbling headlong through time, skidding to a halt on a path several centuries older than the one he’d left, though no less familiar.

“Gideon?”

“Arrival successful, Professor. And your classes were canceled for tomorrow.”

“Good,” Eobard says. “We don’t want to be disturbed.”

* * *

Eobard’s lab is, of course, exactly how he’d had left it. Naturally, since from his lab’s point of view Eobard has been gone only a few minutes. Eobard had thought he’d gotten used to the way time travel resets one’s perspective, but it seems he’s gone and gotten himself rooted in a particular timestream, because being out of it feels jarring. The matters that are so concerning to Eobard in the early twenty-first century are meaningless here in the glorious future. The effects on history have long since vanished into the general noise. All the affected people have long since turned to dust. Even Barry, who should be immortal.

_And our child?_ It occurs to Eobard, suddenly, to wonder what becomes of Kid Flash. As a speedster he should share the same immortality as Eobard and Barry. Eobard can’t recall his fate. And that’s suspicious, because Eobard has spent more time in the Flash museum than anyone who doesn’t work there (and several people who do). He’s read every scrap of paper that mentions the Flash, whether primary source or sheer guesswork three centuries later. Studied every possible connection, however remote. Eobard should have this information at the tip of his tongue. And he doesn’t.

“The timeline is in flux,” Eobard says out loud.

Gideon hums. “Affirmative,” she says. “Registering temporal disturbances up and down the timestream.”

“Localize.”

“Unsurprisingly, the locus of the disturbances is in the early twenty-first century.”

“Intensity?”

Gideon hums again. “Disturbances at the locus are registering six point nine on the Kairos scale.”

Eobard swears. “We were right to come,” he says grimly.

“Yes. The mere act of our transit through time has opened up a wide range of viable futures and introduced significant variability into the probability matrix.”

“Which means,” Eobard says, “something we do here, or something we learn here, or decisions we make here, are going to have a dramatic effect on the timeline.” He nods to himself. “Which means there _is_ something here to find that there wasn’t here before.”

“That is the most likely cause, yes, Professor.”

Eobard rubs his hands together. “All right, Gideon. Fire up the old STAR Labs database. Let’s see what’s new.”

* * *

It takes them weeks to find it. They’d started with the easiest places, trying new passcodes, looking for flagged data, seeing if Caitlin had added new files to Barry’s medical records. But there’s nothing – at least, nothing obvious. Whatever is new is hidden, and hidden well.

Eobard abandons the opportunistic approach after twenty-four hours. As anxious as he is for answers, the fact of the matter is that here, in the glorious future, they have all the time in the world. Eobard could spend a century here and still return to Barry’s side the second after he’d left. Which means there’s no need for shortcuts – and no excuse for sloppiness.

“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” Eobard says to Gideon. “A bit-by-bit comparison of the current instance of the database to the copy you accessed last.”

Gideon doesn’t carry a complete copy of that database with her, but she does have a copy of its data table. It will take days to go through it at a bitwise level, but at that level it’s also impossible to hide. Gideon will find the data that isn’t in her memory banks, and then they can begin the painstaking work of reconstructing it.

In a perfect world, Eobard would simply jump ahead to when Gideon had finished her search. But Gideon must stay rooted in chronological time to execute her search. Jumping _without_ Gideon and her precise calculations will open Eobard up to all sorts of nasty temporal snarls, especially with the timeline so in flux. He could destabilize everything. It’s simply not worth the risk.

“I reluctantly agree,” Gideon says. “Commencing search. For improved speed, voice interface will be off by default. Please use the console to access available functionality.”

Eobard is reminded that he’d once wanted to teach her to sigh. He sighs for them both. It’s going to be a long week, without even Gideon to talk to.

Then, because he has nothing better to do, and he has to pass the time somehow, he goes to teach class.

* * *

Eobard teaches class. He grades student papers. He even remembers his meeting with Dean Calhoun, and manages to convince her that earthquake prediction is the top focus of his research right now.

Right now, of course, Eobard couldn’t care less. And at the end of this he intends to go back to the twenty-first century for good. But immortality means that, even traveling through time at the rate of one second per second, Eobard will find himself back here once again. And that future-present version of himself, who is presumably even now lying low in a chateau in France waiting for the coast to be clear, might want to step into the current-present Eobard’s shoes and live this life that right now he’s more than ready to abandon.

Future-present Eobard might even be interested in earthquake prediction. Who knows? Or perhaps future-present Barry, who is absolutely, positively waiting in that chateau as well, will want to take up the task.

Eobard steadfastly refuses to think that Barry might not make it to the glorious future. He imagines the chateau instead. Imagines designing it, imagines Barry furnishing it. Everything comfortable – modern technology peeking out from around mid-twentieth-century antiques. Just for good measure, Eobard imagines it full of children, too. There. Isn’t that nice?

The days drag. The nights drag worse. One night, when he’s too tired even to run anymore but still unable to sleep, Eobard finds himself trailing his fingers down the spines of the few physical books he owns. Antiques, every one of them: some of them inherited, some sentimental, some in this format because they were never digitized, or digitized at great expense and locked behind commensurately high licensing fees. Of course, in the center of the shelf is his pride and joy: Iris West-Allen’s biography of the Flash. It had been worn when Eobard had gotten it, one of the few physical copies not held in a museum. It’s gotten more worn since. If Eobard had locked it behind glass, its value would have quadrupled since he’d bought it. But Eobard had read it, thumbing through every page and poring over every grainy photograph. Had carried it with him on public transportation and moved it in boxes from office to office, undergrad to grad student to post-doc to each of the long steps along the track to full professorship. When Eobard had finally gotten his speed, he’d bought a copy of the first printing on release day and stored it safely in a bank vault. But not for the money. As insurance against the day when this much-loved copy falls apart. 

Eobard pulls it off the shelf and looks at it. Blinks. For a moment, he’d have sworn the cover had changed.

Slowly he opens it.

> _Although in his first year of action the Flash divided his time more or less equally between human and metahuman threats, that balance was not to remain. Metahuman threats became increasingly more pervasive, and the Flash was seen less and less on the streets of Central City bringing the average criminal to justice._
> 
> _One of the last recorded examples of the Flash’s participation in ordinary justice_

Eobard blinks. The words are skipping around beneath his eyes. He knows this book backwards and forwards, can recall parts of it from memory, but –

_In his lone year of action the Flash divided his time more or less equally between human and metahuman threats. One of the last recorded examples of the Flash’s participation in ordinary justice_

“Gideon,” Eobard whispers. She doesn’t respond. She’s not listening.

> _Tragedy struck the Flash’s personal life shortly before his death; in one of his rare recorded interviews, he spoke of a personal loss, the death of a child. Although he said nothing further on the subject, many scholars have posited_

The book tries to slide out of Eobard’s fingers. He grips it more tightly, smoothing the page with fingers that shake.

> _Although many scholars posited that the death of this unknown child took place before the Flash began his career of heroism, and may even have driven him to take up hero work, it is my belief as a biographer that_

Eobard reaches out blindly, searching for the manual override that will turn Gideon’s voice recognition circuits back on.

> _The Flash was initially said to have disappeared, not died; even my own initial reporting (3, ibid.) on the subject reflects this belief. His death was soon established as a fact, but its means was not. Although the Flash was known to have been fighting an enemy who was later brought to justice by other like-minded heroic metahumans, no one has ever been able to demonstrate why this particular battle should have been the Flash’s last. The criminal was not particularly dangerous relative to other enemies the Flash had defeated. No specialized weapon or trap that might account for the difference was ever recovered. It leads one to speculate that, perhaps, the difference was not in the foe, but in the Flash himself…_

Eobard smacks the override with far more force than it needs. “Gideon,” he says, voice harsh. “Kid Flash.”

There’s a noticeable pause as Gideon downgrades her search process in order to free resources to handle Eobard’s request. But when her voice comes, it’s almost surprised. “Local disturbances reading six point two on the Kairos scale. Professor, what have you done?”

“Kid Flash,” Eobard repeats. “What happens to him?”

Gideon hums. Then she says, “Error. There is no recorded instance of Kid Flash in the current timestream.”

_“What_?”

“New data is becoming available. I am accessing a new set of timelines. Please wait.” She hums again. “System processing.”

Eobard wants to jump out of his seat and run circles around the Earth. He wants to spin back time and do whatever it takes to stop this from happening. But there’s no one to fight, no one to destroy. Except perhaps himself.

Could he do that? Could he disrupt the critical moment – prevent he and Barry from ever being intimate, from conceiving? There’s a rebellion within him at the thought, but if the child is lost anyway – if preventing his existence saves Barry’s life, or at least extends it to 2024 –

“Processing complete,” Gideon says. “I am accessing three major branches of chronolinear divergence.”

“Elaborate.”

“Two branches, including your timestream of origin, Professor, report the existence of a ‘Kid Flash’. The other, including the timestream we currently inhabit, does not.”

“Tell me about them.”

Gideon hums again. “In your universe of origin, Kid Flash appears in the historical record beginning in approximately 2016. He appears as a young adult male of African or related descent.”

“As an adult,” Eobard says. “As – so he’s not – ”

Gently for her, Gideon says, “Although another genetic change on your part, in addition to some time travel, could account for the discrepancy, it is more probable that that Kid Flash is not your biological descendant.”

“I can remember now,” Eobard says slowly. “The statues in the Flash museum – he was always portrayed as Barry’s equal. His contemporary. I forgot that, for a while. While the timeline was flexing.”

“In those universes, Barry Allen disappears in 2024, in accordance with the pattern of events with which you are familiar. Your presence in the twenty-first century does not alter that pattern of events, unless – ”

“Unless I get Barry with child.”

“Yes. That appears to be the catalyst for the other two branches to come into existence.”

“One which includes Kid Flash, and one which doesn’t.”

Gideon hums again, accessing further data. “In universes where you leave the twenty-first century and do not return, Barry Allen suffers a miscarriage at approximately twelve weeks. Although the experience is emotionally traumatic, he experiences no lasting physical effects and lives until his disappearance in 2024.”

Twelve weeks. That had been about when Eobard had gone back the first time, hadn’t it. When he had lingered by the living room windows and Barry had seen him.

“Kid Flash?” Eobard asks.

“Appears at the same time, and fitting the same physical profile, as the Kid Flash of your universe.”

“My return changes that,” Eobard says.

“Affirmative. Data remain scarce, but Dr. Snow theorizes that the presence of the male is helpful in carrying the pregnancy to term. She cites several parallels in the animal kingdom.”

“So if I stay away, Barry is safe. At least until 2024.” Their child dies, but there’s no universe, it seems, where their child lives. Eobard feels something yawning and awful inside him at the thought. Shoves it away. Now is not the time.

Gideon makes a doubtful noise. “I am not equipped to judge human mental or emotional states, but the evidence does not support describing Mr. Allen as ‘safe’ or ‘well’ in the years following your departure and the loss of the pregnancy, in timelines where you do not return.”

Does not support. Eobard imagines it. No, he doesn’t think so.

“But if I return, Barry dies.”

“Yes, Professor. That is the third branch. And in that timeline, there is no Kid Flash.”

Gideon doesn’t have to explain why. There is no child to take up the mantle – and the young man who had become Barry’s partner no longer has another speedster to look up to, to model himself after. That young man may still have become a hero, but he would have taken a different name. Kid Flash never comes to be.

They’re silent for a long time. Gideon has nothing more to say. Eobard doesn’t speak, either. It doesn’t seem right. He’s mourning something that hasn’t happened yet – mourning a future that he’d give anything to avoid, but seems inescapable.

At last Gideon says, “Professor, I have seen your capacity for creativity and brilliance many times before. No event in time is so fixed that it cannot be changed. I believe – ” Gideon stops. Starts again. “I estimate a high probability that you will determine an alternative course. A fourth branch, if you will.”

“Believe?” Eobard repeats.

Gideon doesn’t answer. The silence is almost offended.

It almost makes Eobard smile. “Barry believes in me too,” he says, half to himself. “I’m not entirely sure why.”

“Perhaps because he has seen the same capacity for brilliance within you that I have.”

If things have come to a pass where even Gideon can talk of belief, then they are dire indeed. But at the same time, her belief – and Barry’s – are heartening things.

“With your permission,” Gideon says, “I will return to my differential search of the STAR Labs database.”

“Yes, do,” Eobard says. “I’ll be… here. Waiting.”

“Very well, Professor.”

Gideon goes back to work. Eobard stares at the wall. Then he looks back down and slowly opens the book on his lap. He’s a scientist, first and foremost – a researcher, a seeker of knowledge. In this book is knowledge. While Gideon conducts her search, therefore, Eobard will conduct his. And attempt to find a path forward that is one they all can follow.

* * *

Midterms come in the middle of the next week, a special kind of purgatory reserved for professors who have, in their hubris, attempted to teach. Eobard grades them in a kind of fog, grief and exhaustion combining to produce a state of suspended animation in which he is fatalistic rather than offended at the quality of his students’ output. Mostly.

“I only just lectured about this last week,” Eobard says in disbelief, marking yet another series of equations wrong. “Are they deaf, or just bad at math? If they’re deaf, why aren’t they getting the filed lecture texts? If they’re bad at math, why on Earth are they pursuing a degree in _chronodynamics_?”

Gideon doesn’t answer. Every flop she possesses is being devoted to the task of sifting through the STAR Labs database. Even something as minor as monitoring the ambient audio in Eobard’s lab and offering snarky deadpan commentary in return has been turned off to better optimize the process.

Eobard is no longer surprised to find that he misses her. He would have denied it strenuously before – before the past, before Barry. Now he is mostly resigned to the fact that he has come to care for the motley crew of people he has assembled around himself.

“And this one,” Eobard continues, flipping to the next paper. He’s not going to give up the habit of talking to Gideon when no one else is around. He suspects that, if he did, he’d find himself buried by the weight of the emotions he’s trying not to confront. “How he got this far in this field without a basic understanding of differential equations, I’ll never understand. Worse, I’m pretty sure three other students cheated off him. Which means that those three students are _worse_ than he is at math.” Eobard stares at the equations in sullen disbelief. “Worse at math,” he repeats, shaking his head. “None of them are going to graduate in this department if I have anything to say about it.”

“Yes,” Gideon says, unexpectedly.

“Yes, they’re not going to graduate, or yes, I have something to say about it – wait!” Eobard’s stylus drops out of his hand and he tosses his tablet onto the nearest chair without caring about the risk to department resources. “Gideon!”

“Yes, Professor. The search is complete.”

“And?” Eobard doesn’t quite stop breathing, but it’s close.

“Yes,” Gideon repeats for the third time. “I have located additional data.”

“What is it? Medical data? Metahuman data?” Eobard is reaching out for nothing. Drat this time and its holographic technology anyway –

“None of those things. It appears to be a video file.”

* * *

Eobard doesn’t have classes this afternoon, but he does have office hours, which he cancels mercilessly. Most of his students are beyond help anyway. The ones who will pass will pass without help from Eobard. Besides, after today, he intends to go back to Barry and not leave Barry’s side until they both get back here the old-fashioned way. Meaning that the rest of the semester – ungraded midterms, cancelled office hours, unfinished earthquake prediction research, and all – are officially a problem for future him.

He goes home. He’d go home anyway; it’s the only place he’d deem safe enough to watch what he expects to be video of Barry’s final fight. And he has to go home, because it’s also the only place where a video of such age can be viewed without resorting to Gideon’s holographic projector.

This is one video Eobard wants to watch on a screen. He doesn’t know what’s in it, but he knows he’s not going to like it.

He goes home. Sets the security system to max. Sets all of the communications systems to _do not disturb_. Sits down on the couch, which is just as comfortable now as it has ever been, but doesn’t feel that way, because Barry isn’t next to him.

“All right, Gideon,” Eobard says, though it’s not all right at all. “Play the video.”

It snaps to full-quality life. This isn’t a grainy surveillance video outside a convenience store or a traffic camera straining its limits. This is future-quality tech. This is the monitoring equipment Eobard had installed in STAR Labs. It’s showing the cortex, and a nervous but smiling Barry is being helped up onto a biobed by a nervous and unsmiling Eobard. Watching in the glorious future, Eobard knows immediately what he’s seeing: the Barry in the video is hugely pregnant, and the timestamp would be a dead giveaway regardless. It’s birth time.

_Now? We get attacked now?_ Then Eobard feels like a fool. _Of course, now. What better time?_

Caitlin appears in the video, wheeling in a medical cart. “I’m going to do one more ultrasound to make sure everything’s still okay,” she says. “Then I guess it’s on to the show.”

Video Eobard says, “Barry, are you sure you don’t want to let Caitlin do this? She’s got a lot more training, experience – ”

Barry is shaking his head. “We talked about this, Eobard.”

“A C-section isn’t exactly risk-free,” Caitlin says to the Eobard in the video. “Especially with the way Barry would be healing up literally around my scalpel. Oh, and the lack of any pain medication.”

“You could give him something,” video Eobard argues. It sounds like he already knows he’s going to lose this argument, and is arguing more out of a sense of desperation than anything else.”

Barry shakes his head. “A normal dose just goes straight through me,” he reminds video Eobard. “Speedster metabolism. There probably _is_ a dose that would knock me out, but who knows what its effects might be on the baby?”

“Or Barry, for that matter,” Caitlin says, starting to prep the ultrasound wand. “And without it a C-section would _hurt_ , and I mean ow.”

“Can’t be worse than getting struck by lightning,” Eobard says. Watching, Eobard looks closer, sees how his knuckles are white where he grips Barry’s arm.

Barry puts his hand over that white-knuckled grip. “I have faith in you,” Barry says gently.

“I don’t know if I have faith in myself,” video Eobard admits.

Caitlin stops what she’s doing. “If you want to wait more – ”

Barry shakes his head. “We waited nine months. As far as you can tell, baby’s fully cooked. It was nice to _hope_ my body was going to miracle up a nicer way to give birth, but at this point it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.”

Caitlin nods. To Eobard she says: “I’ll be right here. Worse comes to worse, I’ll step in and Barry gets a C-section the old-fashioned way. But if you can phase the baby out, that’s got to be best for everyone. I mean, how else would speedsters do it in the wild?”

“Please,” Barry adds softly. “I’d rather do it like this. If something goes wrong, I don’t blame you. This is my decision. So, please?”

In the video, Eobard closes his eyes. Nods.

“Just don’t grab a vital organ by mistake and you’ll be fine,” Caitlin says.

“Almost certainly not helping, Cait,” Barry says through gritted teeth.

_Here it comes_ , Eobard thinks.

The next few seconds are a blur. Not literally: Eobard can see everything that happens. Though it happens quickly even by his standards. The Eobard in the video is clearly using a speed booster.

Eobard, watching, is so tense he thinks he can hear his joints creaking. Any moment now, he thinks, the attack is going to come. Any moment now something is going to catch them all at their most vulnerable, and Barry –

Barry has been tense, stiff, but he relaxes abruptly as Eobard’s hands phase back out of his body. Eobard is holding something small and red like it’s a football. Caitlin is bending over Barry, high-tech scanner whirring in one hand, her other hand palpating Barry’s stomach. The moment Caitlin’s done with Barry, she drops her tools carelessly and devotes all her attention to the football. Which, Eobard belatedly realizes, isn’t a football at all.

“Activity, pulse, grimace, appearance, respiration,” Caitlin chants to herself, setting the baby down on what looks like a scale and is actually a piece of highly advanced medical scanning equipment. Several displays pop into existence, all of which look reassuringly normal. Caitlin smiles. A moment later, there’s the sound of a baby crying.

Barry is trying to sit up. It only takes another moment for the Eobard on the screen help Barry to a sitting position. Caitlin is weighing and measuring and reaching for a nearby blanket. A moment later she turns around and presents Barry with a wrapped bundle, which is still screaming its head off.

“Congratulations,” Caitlin says, beaming. “I’m pretty sure it’s a boy.”

Barry takes the bundle into his hands. Eobard cranes his head for a better look, noticing only after he’s done it that the Eobard on the screen is doing the exact same thing. The Eobard on the screen is visibly awed; the Eobard watching doesn’t want to place any bets on his own expression.

“What do you mean, _pretty_ sure?” Barry asks. He doesn’t take his eyes off the baby.

“I can’t exactly judge based on the penis,” Caitlin says. “Based on the x-ray, I think he’s got the same inside bits Eobard does. I won’t really be sure until he hits puberty. Oh, but he _does_ have a penis. So for the human birth certificate I’ll indicate ‘male’. You get to deal with explaining the gender binary to him.”

“We could always relocate to the glorious future,” the Eobard on the screen says. “No oppressive gender issues there.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Barry says, “and neither do you, really.”

“No,” that Eobard says. He reaches down and puts a hand on the baby’s head, heedless of the muck still covering his skin. “I don’t.”

The Eobard watching lets out a breath. He reaches out, too. Touches the image of the child on the screen. Their child, his and Barry’s. The child that they’ve made.

The video ends.

“Nothing happened,” Eobard says.

“I beg your pardon, Professor,” Gideon says. “Several events transpired which – ”

Eobard holds up a hand. He’s reeling, but it feels distant. The sound of their baby crying is still ringing in his ears. But he’s curiously calm. Something is tickling at the back of his mind. Some realization, a constellation of disparate details that he has been collecting, consciously and otherwise, which have now come together.

“Professor?” Gideon asks.

Eobard gets up. Goes to the bookshelf. Takes down Barry’s biography.

The cover has changed. The name of its author, in the same familiar font, is _Iris West-Thawne_.

Eobard has bookmarked the relevant sections. He knows – had known – this book almost by heart. It had been easy to find the places where it had changed, treacherously rewriting the history that should have been familiar.

> _Tragedy struck the Flash’s personal life shortly before his death; in one of his rare recorded interviews, he spoke of a personal loss, the loss of a child. Although he said nothing further on the subject, many scholars have posited an entire family tree based on that one comment. Reflecting the dominant social mores of the time, the Flash was said to have had a wife, and possibly several other children as well. Speculation on the child’s cause of death was similarly rampant and largely reflected the statistics on mortality prevalent in the early twenty-first-century: vehicular accident, cancer, victim of a mass shooting._

“Gideon,” Eobard says slowly. “Loss.”

“Loss, Professor?”

“Barry’s biography. Iris would have known the truth, whatever it is. She writes that Barry _lost_ a child.”

“Yes, Professor. I have access to that text in full from within the current timestream.”

Eobard looks at the words on the page for a long moment. “English is a funny language, you know. There are lots of words that all seem to mean the same thing. On the surface they do. But a layer or three or ten down, they have subtly different connotations that cause their meaning to diverge wildly.”

That had been an issue for Eobard, when he’d first stranded himself in the past. The centuries between his birth and the early twenty-first century had been more than enough for the language to shift in innumerable intangible ways. Oh, Eobard had more than been able to make himself understood, but the nuances – the slang –

“Gideon, what is the chronodynamic signature of this book?”

There’s a pause. Then Gideon says, “The chronodynamic signature of the book does not match the current universe. Nor does it match the broader signature of this group of universes. It comes from one of the other two branches.” Gideon sounds surprised. “How did you know, Professor?”

“Loss. Not death. Iris was a reporter, she would have – she chose her words carefully.” Eobard smooths the page again. “Death implies life. Implies birth. One might use the term to describe a stillbirth – but then again one might not. And for something earlier, for a miscarriage, almost universally one uses the term _loss_. Unless there are religious or spiritual connotations, but Barry…” Barry isn’t particularly religious. Hasn’t been, since his mother’s death. “He would have described his miscarriage as a loss.”

“But Professor, the video…” There’s a break. Then: “The chronodynamic signature on the video also does not match our current universe’s parent branch. Nor does it match the parent branch of the book.”

“Then to what parent branch does it belong?”

“That’s just it, Professor. It doesn’t belong to any of the three parent branches I previously identified.”

Victory, however premature, is sharp and triumphant in Eobard’s chest. “A fourth branch.”

“Affirmative.” Gideon hums. “I cannot access data from within it. But I hypothesize – ”

“It’s one where Barry lives. Where our child lives. Where we _all_ live, together.”

“It seems so, Professor.”

Eobard closes the book. “We’re going to find that universe,” he tells Gideon. “And then we’re going to make it a reality.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people are enjoying this fic. If so, why not leave me a comment and let me know?


	7. Chapter 7

Eobard’s first instinct is to continue doing what he’s been doing – researching, with Gideon to help him. With _only_ Gideon to help him. The last few months to the contrary, that’s been Eobard’s _modus operandi_ his entire life. Even the decades trapped in the past hadn’t changed that; although Eobard had theoretically had an entire company’s worth of brilliant, highly-compensated scientists at his disposal, the work he’d been engaged in hadn’t exactly been the sort he’d wanted to share with them.

But Eobard isn’t alone anymore. He isn’t, and he doesn’t want to be, and he’s not going to be, not if he doesn’t have to.

He goes back to the past – to the time that increasingly feels like his own – and puts the video in front of the team he’s increasingly starting to think of as _his_.

“Wow,” is Caitlin’s first response. “And here I’ve been brushing up on my C-section techniques. You really can just – ?”

“Apparently?” Eobard says, somewhat dubiously. “I’ve pulled bullets out of myself in the past.”

“You weren’t fast enough to dodge them?” Cisco sounds skeptical.

“As you yourself observed firsthand with Barry, one begins one’s career as a speedster at a fairly slow – all things considered – rate of speed.”

“Fair,” Cisco concedes with a tip of his head.

Barry isn’t saying anything. Eobard looks at him with some concern. “Is everything okay?” he asks tentatively.

He’s worried, perhaps his default mode when it comes to Barry, but it turns out he needn’t be. The face Barry turns to Eobard is bright and shining with happiness, entirely undimmed by any worries about his own fate. “Did you see him, Eobard?” Barry says, awed and glad. “Our son.”

“Probably your son,” Caitlin says, sounding just as pedantic as she had in the video. “Your biology is so freaky.”

“Can we watch it again?” Barry is looking back at the screen, which has frozen on the last frame. Barry is visible only in profile, propped up in the bed, something protective and sweet in the curve of his body over the bundle he holds. Eobard’s hovering is distinctly protective, too. The baby, on the other hand, looks like he’s about to start wailing. From the look on Barry’s face, he finds this adorable. Eobard suspects the reality will be less enjoyable, but doesn’t say so, not wishing to spoil the moment.

What he says instead is, “Of course. We all need to watch it again – and possibly several more times.”

“Um…” Cisco exchanges glances with Caitlin. “I mean, it was sweet, and all, and I appreciate the part where I didn’t have to see bits of Barry that, you know, private, but it’s still a home video at the end of the day. And not to be indelicate, but most people don’t usually watch other peoples’ home videos more than once. You know?”

“I understand,” Eobard assures him. “What you’re not taking into consideration is that this isn’t just a home video. This is the one and only shred of evidence we have that a fourth branch timeline exists. Somewhere in this video there may be – there _must_ be – some clue, some indicator, as to the branch point.”

Caitlin raises her hand, an old habit – Eobard had finally broken of her it at STAR Labs, towards the end as they’d geared up for the particle accelerator launch, but it creeps back again when she’s unsure of herself. “Branch point?”

Eobard laughs. The others look surprised. “I’m sorry,” Eobard says, “it’s just that – this is actually the lecture I was just giving, right before midterms. None of my students seem to have been listening to a word I said, judging by how well they didn’t do on the exams. But it seems I’ll have a second chance, with a far brighter and more motivated audience.” He looks around for the nearest whiteboard and picks up a marker.

“So, the timeline.” He draws a straight line. “It tends to run along more or less as it’s going to run along, unless something interrupts it. The chronodynamic expression of Newton’s first law – an object in motion remains in motion. This is why Gideon is able to show us the future with any degree of fidelity. She isn’t showing us a _guaranteed_ future, but at any given moment she is showing us the most _likely_ future – the future that will eventuate if no action is taken to alter it.

“Now, a branch point, put simply, is what occurs when the timeline _is_ altered.” Eobard draws another timeline branching off from the first. Then, for the hell of it, he scrawls the relevant math in the spare space on the whiteboard. Caitlin probably won’t follow it but Cisco might, if he’s taken enough quantum theory, and if Cisco _doesn’t_ understand it right now he’ll probably sneak back into this lab later and copy down the equations so he can _learn_ to understand it. But the undergraduate-level view is easy enough to expound: “Think of it like a train switching tracks. We all go along to the new timeline. The other timeline doesn’t go away, though. It remains possible. It can be returned to, under the right circumstances.”

“How is this different from alternate Earths?” Cisco asks.

“The short version? Alternate Earths have alternate versions of us; alternate timelines don’t. There aren’t copies of us that go along the main track after we’ve left for the branch. There’s only one set of us, moving from timeline to timeline. Sometimes you retain your memories, your awareness of the change; sometimes you don’t. But there’s still only one you.”

Cisco nods slowly, accepting this. “So something we do, or say, or choose – ”

“Or don’t do, or say, or choose,” Caitlin interjects.

“ – will be the difference between staying in this timeline and switching to another one.”

“And will also determine which timeline we switch to,” Eobard nods. “We might find a way to switch timelines, only to end up in a timeline where Barry miscarries. That’s movement, but not the kind we want.”

“Definitely not,” Barry says emphatically.

“So you think that somewhere in this video is a clue?” Cisco asks.

Eobard sighs, putting the cap back on the marker. “I think that this video is the only clue we have,” he says. “It may not contain the answer, but maybe it can tell us where to look to find it. It may be that it leads us to other evidence, other information. Or maybe it doesn’t, but…”

“But we have to try,” Caitlin completes. She looks determined. “Come on, Cisco. Remember, you don’t have to look at any of Barry’s naughty bits.”

“A fact for which we’re all grateful,” Cisco agrees. He gives Eobard a sideways look. “Except maybe him.”

“Believe me, I’m also grateful no one else gets to see Barry’s… bits,” Eobard says.

* * *

Eobard had restricted the first screening of The Video to Team Flash. _His_ definition of Team Flash. He quickly discovers that Barry has a slightly different definition of Team Flash, and the discrepancy is not friendly to Eobard.

“Iris is my best friend,” Barry says, sounding exasperated. “Eddie is your ancestor as well as a good person. We can’t exclude them, Eobard. I mean – aren’t they going to be our son’s godparents?”

“Our son’s _what_?”

Later, after Barry has explained the concept and Eobard has reluctantly agreed, Barry moves on to another point: “Joe _raised_ me, Eobard. Of course he’s going to be this baby’s grandfather.”

Eobard considers and discards several arguments. He doesn’t think, somehow, that bringing up Henry Allen will be at all helpful to his cause. Although Barry has long since paid the necessary high-powered lawyers to get Allen released on the several technicalities the DA had allowed into the case, Barry’s biological father is, to put it mildly, unable and unwilling to return to traditional society. He has a nice cabin in the woods where he doesn’t have to see people, fishes a lot, and receives home visits from various mental health professionals. He is unlikely to do much grandparenting. Eobard isn’t entirely sure Allen even knows Barry is expecting; he seriously doubts Barry has revealed Eobard’s role in making the baby.

“After all,” Barry goes on, a little sadly, “he’s really the only grandfather – grand _parent_ – this baby’s going to have.”

Nora Allen being likewise dead. And Eobard’s parents being several centuries unborn, not to mention far too toxic to allow around a child. It’s a miracle Eobard has turned out as well as he has. And Eobard’s a murderer.

“When you put it that way…” Eobard sighs.

So they screen The Video for West and the West-Thawnes-to-be. Joe West is vocally uncomfortable with the notion of watching Barry give birth until the notion of the Speed Force C-Section (as Caitlin has dubbed it) is explained to him. West’s reluctance makes Eobard feel better about the whole thing, but he’s still glad when it’s over and Joe West has been sent home, copy of the film in hand. He’ll be even gladder when Eddie and Iris clear out, too, and he can take Barry to bed where they both belong.

Ahem.

Eobard smiles pleasantly across the coffee table at Eddie and Iris. It’s a very useful smile, this. It usually makes guests get up and go without much in the way of further delay.

“So I know we’ve got a lot on our minds,” Iris begins. “But we’re getting close to D-Day, and I think Barry needs a baby shower.”

This is… not the polite equivocating of someone about to make their excuses and leave for the night. Eobard’s smile thins slightly.

Barry, however, leans forward in excitement. “You think so? Could we really do one?”

“Of course, why not?”

“Well.” Barry gestures at himself wryly. “The guest list would have to be kind of limited, given the circumstances. I can’t exactly invite my coworkers. And what kind of gifts would people give me anyway? Have you _seen_ the nursery?”

Eobard sits up at this. He could give them another tour, there’s been a few changes –

“We’ve seen it,” Eddie says hastily, eyeing his descendent as if he knows what Eobard is thinking.

“There have been a few changes,” Eobard tells him proudly.

“I’m sure they’re magnificent,” Eddie says, still hastily.

“It’s very well stocked,” Iris says diplomatically. “But you can always use more diapers. And formula.”

“Formula – ” Barry blinks. Then he swivels his head to look at Eobard so fast Eobard hears Barry’s neck pop. “Holy shit, Eobard, am I going to lactate?”

This is a new thought. Eobard immediately has several conflicting emotions about it. But to answer the question: “How should I know?” Eobard shakes his head. “Let’s go talk to Caitlin about it tomorrow. She may be able to tell. There are signs, right?” For this question he appeals to Iris, as the only person in the room who had grown up _expecting_ to one day produce a baby with all the associated biological changes.

Eddie looks slightly offended by the familiarity of this question. Iris just shrugs. “Sometimes? I think?”

“You think?” Now Eobard’s offended. “How do you not know?”

Iris makes a face. “The educational system of this time period still has a _ton_ of sexist systematic biases. As does the medical establishment.”

Eobard seethes slightly. “I can fix that,” he says darkly.

“You’re technically dead, Eobard, what are you going to do?”

“Right.” That reminds Eobard. “I need to fix that, too. Before the baby’s born.” The other three occupants of the room give him virtually identical skeptical looks, and Eobard blinks. “What?”

“Eobard,” Barry says carefully, “uh…”

“Funny little quirk of the hidebound past,” Iris says sourly. “One male and one female on a birth certificate. Even if we resurrect Harrison Wells, you can’t be on there without displacing Barry.”

Which certainly isn’t an option, though if Barry thinks it is, that might explain why he’s looking at Eobard so warily. But – “Then what I am supposed to do?” Eobard says blankly.

“Go back to not caring about the law?” Eddie suggests.

“Barry wouldn’t like that,” Eobard says before he thinks better of it.

He’s rewarded when Barry snuggles up next to him, wariness gone. “Adopt,” Barry says. “Though you still need to be alive for that, so, yeah, we’d better resurrect Harrison Wells.”

“Alive is the minimum, but you’ll have an easier time of it if you – well. You know.” Eddie seems suddenly flustered.

“If we what?” Eobard wants to know.

Iris and Eddie are giving each other speaking looks. Eobard turns to Barry, hoping for a clue or a speaking look of his own. But Barry is looking down and fiddling with the hem of Eobard’s shirt. Eobard looks back up at Eddie, who steadfastly refuses to meet his gaze. Out of options, Eobard switches focus to Iris, who, to her credit, looks him in the eye.

“If you’re married,” she says.

Barry makes a strangled sound. “Iris!”

“What?” Iris leans back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Hey, I’m not thrilled with the idea, exactly, but it’s the truth. Adoption is much easier if you’re married.”

“That’s not what I – ”

“Barry, if he were going to get there on his own, he would have by now. Trust me. I know a little bit about guys and marriage.” Iris keeps her gaze on Eobard and raises a challenging eyebrow.

Which isn’t necessary. Eobard has already considered the matter, thoroughly, and mostly managed to deal with the resulting emotions. He’s able to remain relatively calm, even a little gentle, as he says, “Iris, Barry’s not interested in marrying me.”

There’s a yelp from Eobard’s side, and suddenly Eobard is being turned around to face six-foot-something of astonished, almost angry, _very_ pregnant speedster. “What on Earth do you mean, I don’t want to marry you?” Barry demands.

“It’s okay,” Eobard hastens to reassure him. “It doesn’t change anything. I know you still want me to stay, and of course I will.” Really, he’s perfectly satisfied as long as he gets to stay with Barry. Be part of Barry’s life. And the baby’s, too, of course. As long as he and Barry and at least one baby – maybe a few more, you know, over the years – all end up together in that chateau in France several centuries from now, living and loving and waiting for their chance to take over future-Eobard’s earthquake prediction research, then Eobard doesn’t need anything else.

“You _idiot_ ,” Barry says.

“Well, it’s been lovely,” Iris says, hopping up from the couch. “Let me know about that baby shower, Barry. Eddie, will you grab our coats?”

“You bet,” Eddie says, also rising with some alacrity. For non-speedsters, they can move fairly quickly when they want to. Or maybe there’s just a peculiar time dilation caused by the intensity of Barry’s gaze pinning Eobard in place. Whatever the reason, within mere moments – subjectively – Eddie and Iris are gone, door closing behind them, and there’s nowhere for Eobard to hide.

“Um,” Eobard says.

“I’m not _interested_ in marrying you?” Barry cries.

“Barry – ”

“No, go on. I want to hear this.”

“You – ”

“I want to hear the reasons why.”

Eobard can sense a pattern. He keeps his mouth shut.

“I mean, you’re a genius,” Barry goes on, warming to his theme. “You’ve watched me my entire life, studied me, you know me better than anyone else alive. So go on. I really want to hear why you think I’m not _interested_ in marrying you.”

Tentatively, Eobard opens his mouth. When Barry continues to wait, he dares to speak. “You never asked.”

Barry stares at him. “I. Never. Asked.”

Eobard nods. He’s unsure about many things when it comes to Barry, frequently and sometimes painfully unsure, but he’s not unsure about this. “No. And you’ve had plenty of time. I mean, as Iris says – we’re not far from D-Day. I thought at first maybe you were just waiting to be certain… obviously there’s a lot to think about…” Eobard shrugs. “But when we got into the third trimester, well. I thought about bringing it up myself, but I thought that might make things painful. The hint was pretty clear. And I won’t say I wouldn’t have liked it if you had asked, but I wasn’t going to risk losing you because I got greedy for more. Trust me, I’m pretty grateful just to be where we are right now.” Eobard summons up a smile – an honest smile, the kind Barry likes best – and gives Barry a reassuring nod. “So it’s okay. Really.”

Barry closes his eyes and takes several deep breaths. “Okay, so I’m not yelling at you right now,” he announces to the room at large.

Eobard blinks.

Barry opens his eyes again and looks at Eobard. “I’m guessing this is some kind of future thing. Where I’m supposed to ask you to marry me if I want to get married.”

“Well,” Eobard says cautiously, not wanting to offend, but not sure how else to respond, “you _are_ the pregnant one.”

“Of course I am.” Barry nods to himself. “Eobard, did you never, I don’t know, watch TV? Or movies? Or read a book? During the almost _twenty years_ you were stranded in this time?”

“I watched movies of you,” Eobard says, then immediately kicks himself. Barry probably doesn’t want to be reminded of what he’d once termed Eobard’s ‘creeper voyeurism’. “But, you know, I was busy. I had a company to build, a particle accelerator to explode… I had to make sure you were safe…” he shrugs.

“You had movie night with Cisco and the others,” Barry accuses.

Eobard sighs. “I was usually running data more than I was watching the movie. The point was to make them like me, not to absorb a working knowledge of early-twenty-first-century pop culture.”

“Eobard,” Barry says, in the same tone of voice one uses with children. Eobard immediately shakes off the daydream that tries to start of Barry one day using that tone with _their_ children, the better to focus on the no doubt important truth Barry is about to reveal. “I was waiting for _you_ to ask _me_ to marry you. Because in _this_ point in history, the male generally asks the female.”

Eobard blinks. Then he blinks again. Then he says, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind and he has basically no filter right now, “Caitlin asked Ronnie to marry her.”

Barry puts his face in his hands. “Of course she did,” he moans.

“And lots of women asked _me_. Well. Harrison Wells.”

“Oh my God,” Barry says.

“I said no, of course,” Eobard adds quickly. “I wasn’t even in a relationship with any of them. They just asked.”

“I’m sure.”

“And Iris – ”

Barry holds up a hand. “This is like when you went back to the future,” he says, sounding suddenly dismayed. “Because you were waiting for me to ask you to stay, and when I didn’t, you thought you had to go.”

Now that Barry mentions it, it is kind of like that, isn’t it? Which opens up entirely new vistas of thought. Eobard says tentatively, “That time… you were hoping I’d stay on my own. Weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Barry says quietly.

“But I didn’t.”

“No.”

“I guess we’re both bad at asking.”

Barry looks up, then away, then back again. “Yeah.”

“Do you want me to, I don’t know, do something elaborate – ”

“ _Eobard_.” Barry sounds exasperated, but he also sounds fond. It makes Eobard’s heart beat a little bit faster to hear it.

Eobard nods. He gathers Barry’s hands up in his. “Marry me?”

* * *

“Somehow I always thought I’d be helping you plan your wedding,” Iris sighs, tying up her bouquet. “Of course, I was imagining something much bigger, too.”

“I’m having a baby in about two weeks,” Barry says. “I can’t even go to the grocery store, much less a church. And I’m a crime fighting superhero. Honestly, this is about the biggest wedding I think I can get away with.”

“Seriously, though, holding it in the cortex?” Iris makes a face. “We could at least go to a park like we did for Caitlin and Ronnie.”

“I’d look a little out of place wearing a muumuu in the middle of August.” Barry shrugs. “Right now all I really care about is making sure I’ve really got him. You know?”

Eobard, tugging a bow tie into place in front of the full-length mirror, turns to smile at Barry. “The feeling is mutual.”

Barry gets up and comes over. “You look dashing,” he says, kissing him. “How come you don’t wear a tie more often?”

Eobard theatrically tugs at his neck. “Backward barbaric fashion practices,” he says, mock-angrily.

“At least you’re getting to dress up.” As Barry’s waistline has expanded, his wardrobe has contracted. Cisco had located a few online business that specialize in ‘maternity’ wear for trans men, but the selection is still regrettably limited. Barry’s found a pair of slacks and a shirt that more or less fit and called it good.

“You look nice to me,” Eobard tells him sincerely.

“Flatterer.” Barry looks around. “Where’s Eddie?”

“I’m here,” Eddie says, hurrying in. “I had to pick up the license.”

“I thought Cisco was picking up the license.”

“Cisco forgot which day the wedding was and pulled an all-nighter last night working on some new piece of tech. Then he fell asleep.”

“It’s eight in the evening.”

“Caitlin is waking him up now. He should be fine for the ceremony itself.” Eddie comes over to the mirror to check himself over. “I look okay?”

“You look great,” Iris says. She’s not even trying to hide that she’s admiring Eddie’s ass.

The STAR Labs PA system crackles to life. “Wedding participants to the cortex, please,” Joe West calls gleefully.

“No running,” Barry says to Eobard. He hooks his arm through Eobard’s and smiles at their joined reflections in the mirror. “I just got my hair to look nice. Today, we walk.”

“Whatever you say,” Eobard agrees.

“Good,” Iris approves. “You keep that attitude and you just might live ‘happily ever after’ after all.”

* * *

The ceremony is brief and over very quickly. West (officiating) tells a traditional folktale about a backyard and a shovel which is clearly directed at Eobard and makes everyone else giggle, though the point of it somewhat escapes Eobard. It doesn’t matter. Eobard and Barry say _I do_ , kiss, then sign a piece of paper. Cisco scans it in to the computer with a great flourish, and Gideon files it electronically. They’re married.

“The adoption papers are ready to be filed whenever the birth certificate becomes available,” Gideon adds. “Congratulations to you both.”

“Thank you, Gideon,” Eobard says.

“Yes, thank you,” Barry beams.

Caitlin has brought sparkling apple cider (“just in case,” she tells Barry, when he points out that alcohol has no effect on him regardless). They all toast. Then it’s time, apparently, for presents. Iris’ original plan for a baby shower has gotten subsumed into the wedding, creating a hybrid event where Barry, still in his wedding clothes, is holding up onesies and smilingly thanking the giver.

Iris and Eddie give Barry several cases of formula. Caitlin had confessed herself unable to tell if Barry would lactate or not, so they’re erring on the safe side and stocking up.

“Still, this seems like a lot,” Eobard says. He’s trying to be diplomatic, but he’s not sure he trusts this century’s formula. He’s considering a run to the glorious future to stock up on synthetics.

“Not if the baby comes out with a speedster’s appetite,” Iris points out.

Barry winces. “Now I’m hoping I _won’t_ be able to nurse,” he jokes.

The pile dwindles; the apple cider is drunk. Joe and Eddie bag up the discarded wrapping paper. Caitlin disappears into medbay to play with her new toy, the one Cisco had pulled the all-nighter developing: remote medical sensors and monitors that are designed to be hooked into the baby’s crib and deliver real-time telemetry so Caitlin will always have up-to-the-minute medical knowledge of the speedster baby soon to be in her medical charge. Cisco goes with her to explain the finer points and write down all her excited ideas for future improvements. Joe offers to drop the presents off at Eobard and Barry’s house, so no one has to carry them at Mach 3, and heads out to take them down to his car.

That just leaves the four of them – Barry, Eobard, Iris, and Eddie. Judging the moment right, Eobard produces another wrapped package, this one for Iris.

“What’s this?” Iris says in surprise, taking it from him when he offers it to her.

“It’s a gift,” Eobard says. “I wrapped it.”

“I think you’ve got the custom a little backwards,” Barry says to him.

Eobard smiles. “Just open it.”

Iris gives a little shrug and does so. “It’s a book,” she announces. “It’s…” she looks at it more closely. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Eddie asks. He sounds a little suspicious.

“It’s my book,” Iris says, voice thick. “I mean – ” she trails off, having obviously seen the name of the author: _Iris West-Allen_.

Eobard reaches over to the table and picks up the more modern version. “Actually, this is _your_ book,” he tells Iris, showing her the cover with its _Iris West-Thawne_ on it. He’d made a separate trip to get the copy that belongs in this timeline, that being more convenient than trying to read it in snatches when Eobard’s original copy had briefly given in to the ebb and flow of chromodynamics. “The book you’re holding is mine. Was mine. When I was young. It’s from my original timeline – the one where Barry vanishes in 2024.”

Eddie has come over to Iris’ side while Eobard has been talking. He, too, notices the author’s name, and the look he gives Eobard is not particularly friendly. “Is there some particular reason you wanted her to have this?”

“It has great personal meaning to me,” Eobard tells him. “I received a copy – that copy, in fact – on my eighth birthday. Before that, I’d had an interest in the Flash, yes, but more or less on the level of any other eight-year-old boy. Reading that book was what set me on the path to become who I am today.”

“I don’t know if I want credit for that,” Iris says, trying to laugh. Her eyes are bright.

“The events it describes are no longer congruent to this timeline, so there’s no harm in you having it. There will doubtless be some similarities, but it’s essentially a work of fan fiction now. Its value is entirely sentimental. And I wanted you to have it.”

“Won’t you miss it?”

“I have another copy,” Eobard admits. “And I’ve already laid in the updated version.” Eobard tosses the modern book to Eddie and watches his ancestor’s shoulders relax when he reads the updated author’s name.

“That’s all right, then,” Eddie says in satisfaction.

“Thank you,” Iris says. Then, to Eobard’s surprise, she walks over and gives him a hug.

“You’re welcome,” Eobard manages.

Eddie is frowning. “Hang on,” he says.

“You’re still my number one,” Iris tells him as she ends the hug, turning to him and laughing.

But Eddie isn’t looking at Iris and Eobard. He’s looking at the book he’s holding – the second book. “This is the version from _this_ timeline,” he says, pointing to the author’s name: _Iris West-Thawne_. “Why have we been combing a video looking for clues when we’ve got the handbook right here?”

Eobard sighs. “It’s been edited.”

“Aren’t most books edited?”

“That’s not what I mean. Though the original – or the one I think of as the original, the one that’s from my timeline of origin – actually _wasn’t_ edited very much at all. The manuscript was found among Iris’ papers after her death in the late 2080s. There was some very light editing, but mostly it was published ‘raw’.”

Iris says softly, “I wonder why I never published it.”

“I’ve often wondered that. But it doesn’t seem like we’ll ever know.”

“Any ideas?” Barry asks his Iris.

“In that timeline you vanish, right? You die.” Iris shakes her head slowly. “Maybe it was too painful.”

“But in this universe – ” Eobard points to the book Eddie is holding. “Iris _does_ choose to publish it. And it’s a different story. I thought at first that all the differences must come from changes between that timeline and this one. But now I’m not so sure.”

Barry is nodding, already seeing what Eobard is driving at. “You think some of the changes are deliberate. That Iris was leaving things out or adding things in.”

“The version I’m familiar with reads almost like a diary,” Eobard says. “I’m not entirely sure that Iris even originally wrote that with an eye towards publication. It was cagey around certain points – she clearly knew that _someone_ else might read it – but she may only have been thinking of her own descendants. I know that her estate redacted portions of the manuscript before it was published, for personal reasons.”

Iris has taken the current book from Eobard and is paging through it. “ _This_ was clearly written for publication,” she says. “It’s the style of writing I use for public consumption. A ‘here-are-the-facts’ narrative with a leavening of human interest.”

“And actual events may be cut or combined or rearranged in order to make the story more interesting.” Eobard sighs. “We can’t rely on it as a factual source, I’m afraid.”

“But it’s still fascinating,” Iris says. “Can I borrow ‘my’ book too? I want to see how they differ – how they’re the same.”

Eobard frowns, unsure. “The timeline…”

“You just said this book isn’t factual,” Iris reminds him.

“And you’ve had us all combing a video for weeks looking for clues to the future,” Eddie points out. “If she does find something, that’s all to the good, isn’t it?”

“He’s right,” Barry says.

Eobard has to admit it. “All right. But please be careful with it, okay? Don’t let it fall into the wrong hands.”

“Very careful,” Iris promises, tucking both books into her satchel. “Thank you. And congratulations again, you too.”

Barry grins and winds his arm around Eobard’s waist. “Mine at last,” he says happily.

* * *

“Home at last,” Barry sighs, a little while later, as Eobard closes the door behind them.

The presents are in the entryway, still in the box Joe West had loaded them all into. Eobard moves the box aside, figuring he’ll deal with them in the morning. It’s late enough as it is. Not that Eobard hasn’t pulled his own share of all-nighters, even recently. But tonight he doesn’t want to be up late in a lab, working. Tonight he wants to be home and safe with Barry. With his _husband_.

The word makes Eobard a little dizzy. He sits down on the sofa in the living room.

“You’re worried,” Barry says, putting his finger on the heart of the matter, as always.

“Aren’t you?” Eobard asks, both a parry and a genuine question. Barry’s life is in danger. Still in danger. Every day Eobard checks the newspaper headline, and every day it’s the same. The date changes, sometimes, but never more than a few days in either direction.

Barry shrugs. “A little bit. But only a little bit.” He grins at Eobard, that brave, devil-may-care grin that never fails to make Eobard’s heart skip. “We’re pretty good at handling dangerous things.”

Eobard shakes his head. “The only thing we learned from the video is that the threat comes after he’s born. You’re due week after next, and I still have no idea where the threat is or where it’s coming from.”

Barry sits down on the couch and snuggles up to Eobard, in a transparent bid to reassure that works despite its transparency. “How many threats do we ever know about in advance?” he asks. “Just knowing that there’s going to _be_ a threat is more than we usually get. Half the time we learn we’re in danger when someone puts their fist in my face.”

This is indisputably true, but does nothing to make Eobard feel better. Putting his arms around Barry helps a little. But increasingly, of late, only a little. “I just want to know you’re safe,” he mutters.

“I know.” Barry presses closer. “I’m safe right now.”

“So you are.”

Barry considers a moment, then transparently switches tacks. “You’re not going to have much longer to enjoy this bump,” he offers, taking one of Eobard’s hands and putting it gently on his stomach. “And I know how much you enjoy it.” He looks up at Eobard through his lashes, a move he’s perfected since Eobard’s return had made it possible for Barry to ever be below Eobard’s eye level. “Take me to bed?”

Eobard feels a little bit guilty over not staying up and continuing to work on the problem of Barry’s safety. But Barry’s right about their general capabilities. And he’s right, too, over how much longer Eobard has to enjoy the bump. So Eobard picks Barry up, takes him to bed, and promptly forgets to feel anything but pleasure and joy.


	8. Chapter 8

Eobard wakes up in the cold light of dawn, heart already beating faster. He’d set an alarm, but he doesn’t need one. Not today. Not on D-Day.

“The D is for Delivery,” Caitlin had joked, when the name had first reached her ears.

“The D is for – ” Barry had started slyly, and Cisco had clapped a hand over Barry’s mouth.

“Please, God, none of that.” He’d glared at Barry, then, for good measure, at Eobard. “ _Some_ of us thought of ‘Doctor Wells’ as a _father_ figure.”

Caitlin had made a joke about daddy kink, everyone – even Cisco – had laughed, and the moment had moved on. Now, with dawn spilling through the shades and casting striped shadows on Barry’s still-sleeping form, hugely rounded belly included, Eobard doesn’t find it quite so funny.

Because Eobard is about to _be_ a daddy. A literal father. Not the kind that’s all about fun and games in the bedroom. The kind that’s about feeding and burping and not sleeping and worrying and –

“You’re thinking so loud it woke me up,” Barry murmurs without moving a muscle.

For a split second Eobard actually believes this, and feels a wave of guilt that’s surprisingly strong, given that he’s recently spent twenty years trying to stop himself from feeling guilt ever. Of course, it never had quite worked, had it? Eobard _had_ still felt guilt. Well, some of the time. He’d been downright cheerful when he’d thrown Wade Eiling into the paws of an homicidal gorilla. But he’d also willingly created a wormhole and risked swallowing up the entire planet just to give Barry a shot at undoing the death of Nora Allen.

Unbidden, Eobard’s hand creeps over to the swell of Barry’s belly. Barry permits this – even encourages it, rolling over to give Eobard better access. Barry had given up the chance to save Nora’s life in order to preserve the life of their child. And Eobard, who is not Nora Allen’s son, would murder her again and live with the guilt for all eternity just to have this moment.

So it’s really a good thing that Barry _can’t_ hear Eobard’s thoughts. If he could, he wouldn’t open his eyes and give Eobard a sleepy smile full of love and trust.

“Why were you pretending to be asleep?” Eobard asks.

“So I didn’t disturb you.”

“Why were you awake in the first place?”

“The same reason you were, I suppose.” Barry’s smile takes on a sly hint. “I was hoping for more round of pregnant sex before we get this show on the road.”

Eobard breaks into a wide smile of his own. “I like the way you think,” he says, leaning over to kiss Barry. “Very, very much.”

Speedsters, it turns out, are as likely to be horny in the third trimester as human women. Or at least Barry is. Eobard has a whole new list of reasons to love Barry’s pregnancy, and they start with the wicked way Barry shimmies as he gets out of the loose pants he wears to sleep.

Almost by definition, sex between speedsters doesn’t last very long in real terms. Soon enough Eobard finds himself placed firmly on his back, limbs arranged according to Barry’s liking as Barry engages in the post-coital cuddle. It’s growing progressively more awkward as Barry gets bigger, but Eobard doesn’t care. Neither does Barry, if the way he purrs is any guide.

“We could just go back to sleep,” Eobard murmurs after a while.

“Caitlin is waiting for us,” Barry points out, though his eyes are drooping.

“She’ll wait as long as we need.”

“Eobard Thawne, are you getting cold feet?” Now Barry sounds perfectly awake and a little amused.

“No,” Eobard says, a deliberately bad lie that makes Barry laugh.

“Come on,” Barry says, pushing himself up. “The sex is fantastic, but I’m ready to have this baby. Let’s go. Today’s the day.”

“Once more into the breach, dear friends?”

“Don’t let Caitlin hear you say that,” Barry says. “She’s got a horror of breach births.”

* * *

They arrive at STAR Labs, where Eobard is unsurprised to find everyone in the know about the baby gathered in the Cortex. He _is_ somewhat surprised to see they’re all munching on a pastry assortment and sipping warm beverages. “We’re catering this now?”

“You never took away our corporate credit cards after the particle accelerator explosion,” Cisco says cheekily. “I’ve been ordering Chinese on your dime for months.”

“Is that why my food bill’s been so high?”

“Like you’d even notice.”

“Well, you guys have fun,” Barry says, cutting in and neatly steering the conversation away from a potentially fraught area. “I’m going to go have a baby. I’ll let you know if I want visitors. It might not be for a while.”

“You take as long as you need,” Joe West says, looking around at everyone to make sure that his dictum is perfectly clear. Eobard scans the room himself and sees nothing but support and agreement, so that’s all right. He can’t blame them for being eager. As long as no one’s getting any ideas about barging in.

“I’ve still got a ways to go on this anyway, so take your time,” Eddie says. He’s frowning down at a pair of knitting needles in puzzlement. “Grandma Esther made this seem a _lot_ easier.”

“What even possessed you to try it?” Iris wants to know, shaking her head in bemusement.

“Barry?” Caitlin sticks her head out of the cortex. “Are you coming in?”

“Yes,” Barry says, before Eobard quite gets it together to say something along the lines of _well, actually…_

Walking in the medbay, Eobard feels a sense of déjà vu. Barry is nervous but smiling. Eobard is nervous and unsmiling. He helps Barry up onto the table and wonders, a little giddily, if there’s something he’s supposed to say or do.

Then the alarm goes off.

“What the hell?” Barry blurts out. From the cortex Eobard can hear half a dozen variations on the same theme.

“Stay here,” Eobard tells Barry. He goes back out to the cortex, the better to see the displays.

“We’ve picked up a metahuman signature,” Cisco is saying, tapping away at a panel in a futile attempt to get more data. “No one we know. Doesn’t match any known power sources, either.”

“So a completely new enemy,” Iris says in disgust. She straightens up from where she’s bent over Cisco’s shoulder and meets Eobard’s gaze. “Do you think…?”

He remembers what he’d thought when he’d first watched The Video: _Now? We get attacked now?_ _Of course, now. What better time?_

“All right,” Eobard says, striving for calm. His heart rate is spiking, though, and he feels lightning beginning to gather in his veins. “We haven’t even gotten started yet, so if our enemy hoped to disrupt proceedings, they’re going to be disappointed. I’ll go deal with this, and then – ”

“Eobard?” Caitlin’s voice holds an unaccustomed shrill note. “I think you’d better get in here!”

_Barry!_ Eobard’s heart is promptly in his throat. He phases into the medbay straight through the wall, not even bothering to take the three extra sideways steps it would take to use the door. “What is it?”

Barry is still on the biobed. He looks, mostly, fine. But he’s staring down at his stomach with an expression of shock.

Eobard looks, too. Barry’s already removed his shirt, and there seems to be something wrong with his skin. Eobard blinks, unsure of what he’s seeing. It seems to be moving. Rippling.

“Professor,” Gideon says into the sudden silence. “I am detecting significant disturbances to local time.”

“Just time? Not space?” And then Eobard realizes what it is – why Barry’s skin seems to be ripping one moment, when the next, after Eobard blinks, everything looks normal. It’s not rippling. _Time_ is rippling. Or, more accurately –

“It feels like I’m running but I’m not,” Barry says. His voice is tight; his whole body has gone tense. He reaches down to touch his belly and a spark leaps from his fingertips. “Like my connection to the Speed Force is going haywire.”

“It is,” Eobard says grimly. He’s staring at a screen full of rapidly scrolling numbers. “But not because of you. Because of the baby. I think – Caitlin, look at this – ”

Caitlin looks. Her eyes widen. “These patterns are the same as – oh my God – Barry, you’re in _labor_ ,” she says.

They barely have time to process this before Cisco shouts from the other room: “Oh, shit, that’s a scary-looking meta!”

“She’s trashing City Hall!” Iris cries. “They need help!”

Cisco again: “Thawne, you better get in here!”

“I’m a little busy!” Eobard shouts.

“I hate to say it – ” Barry winces. “Okay, ow – but I can wait for you to save the day, Eobard.”

“What? No way,” Eobard snaps.

“Human women are sometimes in labor for _days_ ,” Caitlin says. She’s clearly trying to sound calm and confident. It doesn’t help her argument that she actually sounds terrified. “Hours at a minimum.”

“So you can take twenty minutes to kick ass,” Barry says. The air around his stomach does something that makes Eobard’s own stomach lurch in sympathy. It hurts to look at Barry: Eobard’s vision keeps shifting between ‘normal’ vision and the special kind of focus that is used for looking through the time dilation when moving at, or observing others moving at, super-speed. The rapid changes are making him dizzy. Barry groans.

“Oh my God, that apartment building’s on fire!” Eddie cries from the next room.

Eobard hovers uncertainly. He doesn’t actually care about the apartment building or City Hall. But he’s spent the last several months on edge, searching for a threat, and here one is at last. Eobard wants to destroy it. Part of that is rational, and part of that is decidedly _ir_ rational: a whole new set of instincts are shrieking at him about protecting Barry, and also impressing Barry with his strength, and also possibly something to do with a nest and mating and wow, if this is what Barry’s been dealing with for the last nine months, a lot of things Eobard had written off as harmless quirks suddenly make a lot more sense.

Apparent instinct to peacock aside, though, Eobard doesn’t care about the property damage the meta is wreaking or the injuries she’s no doubt inflicting. He cares about _Barry_. And that’s the rub. As much as he hates the idea of leaving Barry right now, as much as his urges all revolt, his rational mind is firm. The threat to Barry is _out there_. In here is state-of-the-art medical technology and a trained doctor, all behind the best security Eobard and the glorious future have to offer. Out there is a metahuman who kills Barry. There’s no competition.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Eobard tells Barry.

“I know you will,” Barry says, doing his best to smile. It twists slightly as time bends around him again.

“The sooner you go the sooner you’re back,” Caitlin snaps, moving into position with more monitoring gear. “Hurry up!”

“Right,” Eobard says, trying to shove down the sinking feeling of dread. “Right.”

* * *

It turns out the shouted bulletins from Cisco and the others have somewhat undersold the situation. Approximately half of downtown seems to be on fire. Fire is unusually dangerous, in Eobard’s estimation. It can leap large distances, somewhat negating his speed advantage. And a speedster’s need for oxygen increases geometrically with speed, increasing the danger of smoke inhalation or oxygen starvation from fire.

Eobard had intended to defeat the enemy first and worry about civilians second, but the enemy has apparently done her research – on the wrong speedster, granted, but she’s done her research. The Flash cares about civilians. Extremely. The metahuman – Cisco, in Eobard’s ear, dubs her ‘Flamebird’ – has taken this to extremes, booby-trapping every building in downtown and surrounding herself with human shields.

“She’s suspending them in a sphere around her with some kind of force field,” Eobard reports back to Cisco and the others in the Cortex. “It’s like something out of a video game.”

“I’d love to get my hands on that tech,” Cisco says.

“Help me get past it and I might bring you back what’s left. How’s Barry?”

There’s a pause. “Fine,” Cisco says, too cheerfully.

Eobard isn’t fooled. “He told you to say that.”

“Yeah,” Cisco admits. “But he’s tough. I honestly think he’d be out there himself right now if you weren’t.”

“Why do you think I’m out here?”

“Fair en – _duck_!”

Eobard ducks. A projectile goes flying through the space where his head had been. A large, heavy projectile. One that lands with a disturbing squelch.

“Tell me she’s not throwing people at you,” Cisco squeaks.

“She’s throwing people at me,” Eobard says grimly.

There’s a moment of silence. Then: “Forget the tech. Kill the bitch.”

“Working on it,” Eobard says.

He works on it. Assiduously. Disabling the booby-traps takes time. Doing it in a way that leaves the civilians alive takes _more_ time. Eobard wants to scream. His lightning shocks him as it travels over his skin. It’s frustrated, impatient, like Eobard is. Barry is back in the cortex, actively in labor. Eobard should _be there_. He should be delivering their child right now. Caitlin’s assurances about the average length of labor are meaningless. They apply to human women, not to speedsters. Human women who take hours to accomplish what a speedster can do in heartbeats.

Heartbeats. Eobard’s heart beats in his ears. He sees the headline every time he blinks. How many more heartbeats does Barry have? How many can Eobard afford to waste, playing Flamebird’s little games?

“Barry?” he demands over his earpiece.

“Looks like you’ve only got three more booby-traps to go,” Cisco answers.

Eobard’s lightning bites at him as his hands move over the wiring in this trap. Something is wrong. This is _wrong_. He is not where he is supposed to be. His connection to the speed force feels more like a wormhole. Feels like it’s trying to pull him in.

He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until he’s standing up, backing away. “Uh, Thawne?” Cisco says over his earpiece. “You’ve still got to splice the blue wire – ”

“Change of plans.” Eobard turns on his heel. The lightning is with him now that he’s doing what he wants; he’s back at the cortex before the words finish broadcasting over the comms. Cisco’s head jerks up; everyone turns to stare. “Who’s got the steadiest hands? Never mind.” Eobard grabs Cisco around the waist. “Hold on.”

“Wait – ” someone says, probably Cisco himself. Eobard doesn’t wait. In the blink of an eye he’s letting Cisco go, standing next to the messy wiring project Eobard had been not-so-patiently unwinding.

“Here,” Eobard says, dropping his comm in Cisco’s hand, which is outstretched, possibly in protest or supplication. Eobard cares for neither. He cares about one thing in this entire universe, and that is Barry Allen. _How_ had he allowed himself to forget that? Never again, he promises himself. To Cisco he says, “Get Iris to read you the schematic. She’ll be good at it. I’m going to Barry.”

“What if I get attacked?” Cisco squawks.

“You’ve been practicing your Vibe powers,” Eobard says ruthlessly. “Test-drive them on Flamebird’s ass.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“I have it on good authority that this will only take a few minutes,” Eobard says.

“A few minutes could be all it takes, dude.”

“Run. Hide. Be clever. I’m sorry, Cisco.” And he is; this is what living here has done to him. Living in the past. It’s made him _care_ for all of these people, these long-dead ghosts who should be nothing but dust but aren’t, alive and vibrant and looking at him as if they still trust him, deep down, despite everything. As if Eobard telling Cisco he can do this, can fight off Flamebird and run and hide and survive until Eobard gets back, means he _will_ do it. “I’m sorry. Barry needs me.”

Cisco closes his mouth. Nods sharply. “If you’re not back in five minutes I’m kicking your ass,” he says.

Eobard doesn’t dignify that with a response. He just runs.

* * *

“I don’t like this,” Caitlin is saying nervously. “I think we need to get Eobard – oh thank God.” Eobard has rematerialized inside the medbay, and Caitlin is looking at him in undisguised relief. “Barry keeps phasing in and out of the speed force – at least I think that’s what this is telling me – ”

Eobard doesn’t need to look at the readouts. He only needs to look at Barry, who is twisting in Eobard’s vision like an Escher painting. _Parts_ of him are moving very quickly, while other parts are stuck in n-speed. It’s terrifying. “Why didn’t you call me?” Eobard cries.

“He made me promise,” Caitlin says miserably. “He was so worried about all the people downtown.”

“We are going to have words about this later,” Eobard tells her, because there’s a time and a place for promises, and a time and a place to _break them_ , and this is definitely the latter –

Barry snaps back into normal space for a moment, all of him at the same speed at once, and blinks into focus. “Eobard,” he says, or rather slurs, vocal chords not quite in sync. Eobard’s ears pop with the effort of listening. “What – ” his speech becomes garbled. “ – lockdown?”

“It’s all right,” Eobard says soothingly. “Everyone is safe, and now I’m here to take care of you.”

To bolster the lie, Eobard crosses the room and lays his hand on Barry’s shoulder. Immediately Eobard feels it: just like he’d felt while he was downtown, a pulling sensation, as if his connection to the speed force is trying to urge him forward.

Or pull him in. Barry is phasing in and out of the Speed Force. What if, Eobard thinks suddenly, Barry phases _in_ and doesn’t phase _out_?

“I tried to do a C-section when it started getting bad,” Caitlin says anxiously. “But I couldn’t make an incision big enough before it closed up again. It’s like all of his speed is in him at once. He practically healed around the scalpel before I yanked it out.”

“He needs another speedster,” Eobard whispers. It all makes sense now: why Barry miscarries in the timeline where Eobard never returns; why Barry dies in the timeline where Eobard is distracted by the metahuman attack. Why Barry survives in the timeline shown in The Video. Barry literally cannot do this on his own. If Eobard simply never returns, Barry loses the pregnancy early – a safety valve for a delivery that he can’t survive alone. But Eobard _had_ come back. Provided the presence – the _speed force presence_ – to allow Barry to get this far. And if Eobard doesn’t step in now, use his own speed to synchronize with Barry’s and get the baby out of him, they’ll both vanish into the Speed Force and never return.

Later on Eobard can look at the logs, all the records of Barry’s condition that Caitlin has been collecting, the data being recorded right now by all the monitoring Barry is hooked up to. Later Eobard can prove this with science. Right now Eobard simply _knows_ it, on the same cellular level where his lightning lives. He acts accordingly.

“Caitlin,” he says, “grab a blanket and get ready to catch. I may have to stabilize Barry.”

He doesn’t wait for her acknowledgement. He just turns back to Barry and reaches for his speed.

There’s an almost tangible feeling of relief when Eobard syncs up correctly with Barry. It’s hard to maintain; Barry’s connection to the Speed Force has gone haywire, and he keeps trying to slide between speeds. But he grabs at Eobard as soon as Eobard matches up with him, and the physical contact seems to help. Or maybe just the fact that they’re in there together. This is what Eobard’s lightning has been trying to tell him, after all.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Barry gasps.

“Just hold on for a few seconds more,” Eobard tells him, and slides his hands into Barry’s body.

Not, as he’d once expected, to hurt. Not to kill, as Eobard had always thought. Not to wrap his fingers around Barry’s heart and squeeze. Now Eobard slides his hands gently around something infinitely precious, something that almost seems to _know_ him, that feels warm and right and natural to the touch. He tugs gently, and their child – their son – slides out as smooth as butter.

There’s an umbilical cord. It’s still half-phased out, passing through Barry’s stomach as if the abdominal wall isn’t even there. Eobard panics for a second before he sees the medical cart Caitlin has pushed into place – the one from The Video. Eobard grabs the scissors lying there, cuts the cord – which, disturbingly, vanishes – and then everything falls back into normal space with a lurch.

There’s an earsplitting scream. It’s coming from the lump in Eobard’s hands, which has a mouth and a nose and tightly-shut eyes, ten fingers, ten toes, and an apparently extremely healthy set of lungs.

Caitlin appears, moving as fast as her human speed allows, and drops a scanner onto the tray. “Make sure Barry’s okay,” she instructs, holding out her hands for the baby.

Eobard hands him over. He’s strangely reluctant to let him go, but he’s also half-frantic with worry for Barry. It seems he needn’t be, though. Barry’s limp against the bed, but the awful shimmering distortion is gone. Eobard touches Barry again – on the cheek, because he wants to, and because he has very little willpower to deny himself right now, his heart still pounding in his chest and lightning crackling through his veins with how close he’d come to losing Barry. Losing them both.

Barry feels normal beneath his fingers. A little clammy, perhaps, but that’s not what Eobard cares about. He cares about Barry’s lightning, his connection to the speed force. And that responds to Eobard the way it always has. Welcoming, familiar, and back under Barry’s control.

“Thank goodness,” Eobard says in relief.

Barry blinks his eyes open and looks at Eobard. “Baby,” he says at once. “Is he – ”

“Just fine,” Caitlin announces. She comes up next to them, holding a blanket-wrapped bundle. “Probably-male, you saw the video, you know the drill. Do you feel up to holding him?”

“Yes,” Barry says at once. Then he makes a face. “Um. Except that my arms feel like spaghetti. But I really want to.”

“Here,” Eobard says. “Lean forward.”

Barry, to give him credit, attempts to do so. It’s not notably successful. “My spine might also be spaghetti,” he says in dismay.

“Just let me.” Eobard calls on his lightning and picks Barry up wholesale, ignoring Caitlin’s dismayed squawk. Eobard sits himself down on the biobed and then settles Barry down in front of him, where Barry can lean against him and not actually have to do anything. “Now, Caitlin.”

Caitlin shakes her head. “Right after giving birth,” she mutters. “By Speed Force C-section, no less.” But she puts their child into their arms, and takes a discreet step back to fiddle with some of the monitoring equipment.

Eobard stares downward. Past the curve of Barry’s neck, there in Barry’s and his arms, is their child. He blinks and waits. This is a magical moment. All the books and the movies say so. Any moment now, he will feel a wave of love so powerful it will make his feelings for Barry appear trivial and meaningless. His priorities will realign in a way that’s almost tangible. Tears are not out of the question.

“He’s incredible,” Barry murmurs. “A miracle.”

“He is,” Eobard agrees.

“I want to call him Jay,” Barry says. “Or Jason, I guess. I – did you read those comic books? About the man who could run really fast? Did they make it into the future?”

“They made it into your biography,” Eobard says. “Iris wrote that you’d read them when you were young. That you modeled yourself on the fictional Jay Garrick, who was your ideal of a hero.”

“I may have had a few other models,” Barry murmurs. “But I think one Eobard in the family is enough.” He offers their son a finger, poking it at his fist so he’ll get the idea. A moment later the child has Barry’s finger in a death grip. He butts his nose against it, possibly under the mistaken impression that it might produce milk. Eobard glances up. Caitlin is already warming a bottle.

“Do you like it?” Barry asks.

“Jay,” Eobard muses, sounding it out. It sounds strong. It sounds _good._ It’s the name of a good person – a hero. It’s the name of Barry’s son. And maybe also Eobard’s. “Yes,” Eobard says. “I like it.”

He smiles down at Barry. Barry smiles back, looking as if he can wish for nothing more than life has given him in this moment.

Their child decides that his lungs need more exercise. He looks like an old, old man, except tiny. Eobard still hasn’t felt the promised wave of love. He would cheerfully burn an entire world for little Jay, but mostly because he has just come out of Barry and is part-Barry, in addition to being part-Eobard.

Well. Eobard had taken twenty-plus years to fall in love with Barry. He can be patient a little while, if that’s what it takes, to fall in love with their son.


	9. Chapter 9

“Here you are,” Eobard says the next day, smoothing the blanket over Barry and bending to make sure their son is similarly secure. The little boy is well-swaddled and drowsing in his bassinet, sucking on a fist, dead to the world. For fifteen minutes at most. After thirty-six hours of fatherhood – spend in medbay under Caitlin’s gimlet eye – Eobard feels like he’s beginning to get the hang of this.

Eobard had basked in the moment for only, well, moments, before sounds intruding from the cortex had reminded him that he’d left Cisco downtown with limited backup and a murderous metahuman on the loose. Eobard had made to get up – though Barry’s protesting whimper had been difficult to override – when Cisco himself had appeared at the doorway. He’d been wearing his Vibe gauntlets, _eau de_ smoke, and a shit-eating grin.

“Guess whose tech field proved super easy to disrupt once I tuned my vibration to her frequency?” Cisco had boasted. “Flamebird’s, that’s who.”

“Oh, well done, Cisco,” Eobard had said warmly.

“She’s in lockdown now. Hey, I bagged my first evil meta! Practically all by myself!” Cisco had done a little twirl. “Paramedics are on the scene, cops doing their thing, it’s all in good hands. And my best friend had a baby! Can I see?”

The floodgates had opened at that point, Barry allowing everyone to come in for a few moments and coo over the small bundle. Something warm and powerful had started to take root in Eobard’s chest with every fond word directed at Barry and Jay. That’s something Eobard has filed away – when he’s alone with Jay, or Jay and Barry, it’s easy to feel frustrated and overwhelmed and unsure. When there’s someone else around, Eobard is reminded of exactly how impressive Jay’s mere existence is, and how much more of an expert on Jay Eobard is than anyone else except Barry. It’s a useful boost.

Now, at home, Eobard pats Barry on the shoulder. “All safe and snug.”

Barry yawns. He smiles at Eobard sleepily. “All safe,” he repeats. “There was never anything to fear. It was just us all along.”

Eobard straightens up. Slowly he says, “What?”

“The big threat,” Barry says. “The one that was going to kill me when I didn’t have my speed. It didn’t exist. Or it did, I guess, but it was him. Jay. So it was us. Because we made him. It was just us all along.”

Barry’s slurring his words towards the end. With exhaustion, not with the effects of superspeed. His eyes are drooping. They’re sleeping in shifts, and they need less sleep than the standard human, but their son is still running them ragged.

“Just us,” Eobard repeats. “Just us all along.”

Barry doesn’t answer. He’s fallen asleep.

Eobard turns away and walks to the kitchen on autopilot. He starts making a bottle. That keeps his hands occupied. His mind is working down an entirely different thought.

“Just us,” he says again to himself, popping the bottle in the warmer. “Gideon,” he says more loudly. “ _Who_ changed my will?”

“As before, Professor,” Gideon says. “All data indicates that _you_ did.”

“Just us all along,” Eobard repeats.

The bottle warmer dings.

Eobard collects the bottle, some diapers, some wipes, a few additional swaddling blankets, a spare bassinet sheet, a burp cloth, an extra onesie, a hat, two pairs of socks, and a stuffed animal. He carts the lot into their bedroom and sets it all up. When Jay wakes up, Eobard feeds him, changes him, and ‘reads’ to him, an activity which involves much more juggling than Eobard had anticipated. Babies, Eobard is learning, are basically very wiggly potatoes with no sense of self-preservation and a wail that puts Black Canary to shame.

Eventually Jay settles down. Eobard swaddles him again and tucks him back in his bassinet. In the bed, Barry stirs.

“Whassit?” he mumbles.

“Putting Jay back down,” Eobard answers. “Go back to sleep, you’ve got however long he stays down before it’s your turn again.” He takes a breath, then says, “I’m going to run out for a minute. Something I need to take care of. I should be back before Jay wakes up again.”

“Kay,” Barry yawns. He rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Eobard makes sure there’s another bottle ready, then goes out to the jogging track in the back.

“Do you need me to run some calculations, Professor?” Gideon asks.

Eobard shakes his head. “No, Gideon,” he says. “I know exactly when I’m going.”

* * *

The house is quiet as Eobard approaches it. Its two occupants are sleeping. Barry, curled up sweet and trusting in the master bed. And next to him, another Eobard.

Eobard remembers this night. Remembers the way Barry had stopped dead when he’d walked into the cortex and found Eobard still sitting there, working into the night. Remembers the sudden heat, the intensity of Barry’s gaze, the magnetism of his presence as he’d walked towards Eobard, intent in every line of his body. Remembers the taste of the first kiss Barry had given him.

Barry had run them here about the time Eobard had slid his hands underneath Barry’s t-shirt. They’d moved so _slowly_ , by Eobard’s standards. And yet so quickly. Eobard’s speed had still been damaged then. Any taste of lightning had been a gift. One only surpassed by the sight of Barry experiencing pleasure at Eobard’s hands.

It had been the far side of midnight when Barry had made his desire for Eobard known. Now dawn is beginning to tickle the sky to the East. But the speedsters in the bed sleep on, exhausted from their exertions.

This is the moment. The only possible moment. Close enough to the moment of reckoning that this past Eobard won’t have time to learn of the changes his future self is about to make. Far enough from that same moment that this past Eobard has allowed himself to be briefly vulnerable, and sleep next to his eternal nemesis.

“Gideon, alert me if they wake up early,” Eobard orders.

“Yes, Professor,” she says.

The law firm of Horton, Danvers, Drake, and Horton has been handling Harrison Wells’ public business since Eobard had taken over the identity and moved it to Central City. Over the years, Eobard has trained them well: he is to be attended to immediately, with a minimum of questions, and a maximum of efficiently. It is therefore neither unusual nor a problem when Eobard calls them at five in the morning and informs them he’ll be at their office in five minutes, with instructions for a new will, to be witnessed, sealed, and filed as soon as the register opens.

“And set up the sale of the condo,” Eobard tells Gideon as he runs, heading downtown. “Bury it in your subroutines so it happens at the right time, without past-you being aware of it.”

“Of course, Professor,” Gideon says. She sounds delighted to oblige.

* * *

Back in the glorious present, Eobard climbs into bed next to Barry and their sleeping son. He yawns. Rewriting the past – or, more accurately, fulfilling his always-performed role without being caught or upsetting the chronodynamic applecart – is exhausting. As is new parenthood. Thankfully, the next time Jay wakes up, it’s Barry’s turn. Eobard puts a proprietary arm over his husband’s shoulders and prepares for some well-deserved shuteye.

Eobard’s rustling around has disturbed Barry, though. Barry opens his eyes and delivers a yawn of his own. “Did you take care of everything you needed to?” he asks.

“I did,” Eobard says. He takes the opportunity to kiss Barry, and lets out a happy sigh. “Everything is exactly the way it should be.”

* * *

Meanwhile, in the glorious future, Eobard Thawne walks into his lab. He sets his completed earthquake prediction research on the table and gives the stack of graded midterms an approving pat. “I forgot about those,” he says to his companion.

“You generally left things pretty tidy.” Barry grins. “You certainly sewed up all the time loops we got tangled up in rather neatly.”

“I did at that, didn’t I?” Eobard looks around his lab. “Still, I’m looking forward to not having to dodge Time Wraiths for a while.”

“No more having to dodge our other selves,” Barry agrees. “No more assumed names.”

“Well…”

Barry laughs. “That doesn’t count. I took that on freely, remember?”

“Eobard?”

They both turn. “Dean Calhoun,” Eobard says. “How can I help you?”

She comes to a halt inside the lab and gives him a suspicious look. “You’re awfully cheerful today.”

“I’m feeling very rested.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing for the last week? Resting?” She glares. “You put in for time off via _email_ , without even the courtesy of coming by to talk to me – at the busiest time of the year, no less – ”

“It’s November. If this is the busiest time of the year, I’ll go ahead and put in for a month off in May, shall I?”

“What about your midterms? What about your earthquake prediction research?”

“Graded and done,” Eobard says promptly.

Dean Calhoun comes to a halt. “Graded?” she demands.

Barry, with a flourish worthy of the beautiful assistant he’s playing today, hands the stack to Dean Calhoun. She stares down at them, baffled.

“And your research?” she asks.

Eobard presents her with the memory crystal containing the data and results. “I’ll be submitting the resulting paper to several publications. The details are all here.”

Dean Calhoun accepts the crystal dazedly. “So you took a week off to – recuperate?”

“Actually,” Eobard says, “I was getting married.”

Dean Calhoun drops the midterms. Eobard clucks; she takes no notice. She’s staring. “Married?”

Barry comes over and puts his arm around Eobard’s waist. Eobard smiles. “May I present my husband, Barry Thawne?”

“Charmed,” Dean Calhoun says weakly. “I – congratulations?”

“Thank you,” Barry says. He gives Dean Calhoun his biggest, most winning grin. She visibly melts. Then she glances several times between Eobard and Barry, clearly trying to find a way to ask how on Earth Eobard, abrasive, egotistical, and work-obsessed, had managed to date, much less land a husband who looks and smiles like Barry.

She settles on, “Have you known each other long?”

“You can’t imagine,” Barry grins.

“We’re going to put some family pictures up today,” Eobard tells her, because he is never going to miss a chance to say this out loud: “You know, Barry, me... the children...”

“The children,” Dean Calhoun says faintly. She stares at Eobard.

He grins back, enjoying her confusion. “Tomorrow I’ll resume lectures. Oh, and Barry’s going to be teaching here too.”

“He finally convinced me to give it a try,” Barry says. “I’ve been doing practical work, but I admit, I could use a break from the schedule.” He pats his belly and leans forward conspiratorially. “Since we’re working on another.”

“In this department?” Dean Calhoun doesn’t even sound outraged or offended at the idea that a new professor might have just shown up without so much as a by-your-leave. She’s too busy grappling with the radical changes in all her preconceptions about Eobard.

“No, no,” Barry laughs. “I’ll be over in Biomolecular Chem. My specialty is forensics.”

“Oh, forensics, of course,” Dean Calhoun nods.

There’s a pause.

“Well!” Eobard says. “It was nice of you to stop by to welcome me back. I hope you enjoy reviewing the research – I’ll look forward to your notes.”

“My notes,” Dean Calhoun repeats. Then she seems to snap out of it. “Yes! Of course. I won’t take up any more of your time. Welcome back, Professor Thawne.” To Barry: “Professor Thawne.” She pastes a smile on her face and backs out of the lab. Slowly. Eobard and Barry give her identical smiles until she’s gone.

Barry collapses into laughter as soon as the door closes behind her. “That was too much fun,” he says. “She’s exactly as you described her.”

“The more things change, the more things stay the same,” Eobard says in satisfaction, looking around his old not-old lab. It’s just the way he remembers it. “Gideon, have you moved in yet?”

“I am all settled, Professor,” Gideon says from the usual speakers.

“How are we doing with the timeline?” Barry asks.

“Nothing registers on the Kairos scale, Master Allen.”

Eobard coughs.

“Excuse me,” Gideon says serenely. “But I can’t call you _both_ Professor Thawne.”

“She’s got a point,” Barry grins. “Keep the Master Allen, Gideon. For old times’ sake.”

“Oy,” Eobard protests.

“The names don’t _matter_ , Eobard,” Barry says. He comes closer and hooks his fingers into Eobard’s belt, pulling Eobard closer. “What matters is that I’m your Barry.”

“And you always will be?” Eobard asks. He’s not _really_ insecure, not after all this time. But he likes to hear it. He’ll always like to hear it.

Barry smiles. “And I always will be,” he promises. “For the whole glorious future ahead of us.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Eobard says, pulling Barry in the rest of the way for the kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment!


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